[HN Gopher] U.S. national-security leaders included me in a grou...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat
Author : _tk_
Score : 1516 points
Date : 2025-03-24 16:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| This would be unbelievable in a normal administration. The
| combination of flagrant lawbreaking and incompetence is just so
| characteristic of these clowns.
|
| No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet
| secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to
| journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting
| messages.
| krapp wrote:
| -\\(tsu)/- Plenty of people in Trump's own cabinet used private
| email servers too, but no one cared.
|
| As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| I'm sort of surprised Democrats haven't snapped yet.
| ipython wrote:
| Honestly, I think a lot have just given up at this point.
| krapp wrote:
| The Democrats really are the Charlie Brown of politics,
| and the Republicans are Lucy with the football.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Democrat what? There's no power anywhere outside of the
| Trump circle.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| ?
| dekhn wrote:
| The republicans hold the presidency, have a majority in
| congress, and a majority (depending how you interpret the
| moderate members) of the supreme court. Even the more
| moderate republicans are afraid of the Trumpets so they
| mostly vote in-line (see for example Cassidy voting for
| RFK Jr).
|
| There are some things the democrats can do but it's
| mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process,
| or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are
| in disarray with no clear leader or message.
|
| Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let
| Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions
| his presidency.
| archagon wrote:
| Democrats could do a lot with their physical bodies if
| they wanted to. Take a page out of classic American
| protest strategies: strikes, marches, sit-ins, etc.
| dekhn wrote:
| You mean the democratic leadership, or members of the
| party/people-who-vote-democratic?
|
| Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always
| have a small amount of violence and property destruction
| (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful).
| Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the
| military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).
|
| Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the
| population of the US), and persistent, and affect
| business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel
| the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast
| on the republicans.
| archagon wrote:
| People-who-vote-democratic need leaders to organize them.
| Their elected representatives need to be the ones heading
| marches and organizing rallies, not just AOC and Sanders
| shouldering the entire burden.
|
| Yes, the administration will try violence, but it's a lot
| harder to justify when elected officials are on the
| firing line.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Won't happen - Erdogan has written Trump's playbook for
| that. You'll end up in Guantanamo.
| archagon wrote:
| Tens of thousands out in the streets in Turkey right now.
| Still possible there. Still possible here.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| WH comms director is now literally calling people who are
| talking about this "enemies of America, spreading lies"
| timeon wrote:
| > Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let
| Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions
| his presidency.
|
| Also known as "strategy of Paul von Hindenburg".
| lemon_zest wrote:
| They can impeach. That's their only political tool. And
| have it on the record who votes against it. But they are
| useless
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They can impeach.
|
| No, they can't.
|
| > And have it on the record who votes against it.
|
| They cannot force a vote to actually occur on a proposed
| impeachment. They can file it and let it die, that's as
| close as they can come.
| thechao wrote:
| Republicans can't vote against Trump, because the vast
| majority of Congressional districts are gerrymandered;
| this means the candidate can be easily outprimaried with
| just a little bit of cash. The original red map project
| (2010) cost about 40 million; the last map (2020) was
| quite a bit more expensive -- perhaps 10x as much -- but
| still quite cheap considering the benefit (functional
| control of the U.S. government). One of the unintended
| effects of the deep 2010 gerrymanders that project red
| map discovered was that it also distorts the Senate map
| (this was unknown effect, at the time). Until
| gerrymandering is fixed, and the legislative powers ceded
| to the executive are clawed back, there is no "fixing"
| the current situation. It was always just a waiting game
| for a well-heeled (for primaries) autocratically-leaning
| president to come along.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _surprised Democrats haven't snapped yet_
|
| There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing
| bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and
| foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a
| centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages
| (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc
| focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically
| pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016
| to 2020).
|
| The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the
| first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The
| financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing.
| The third group's affiliation with the second lost
| corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans.
| Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost _its_
| base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains
| cohesive, but it 's too small and uncoordinated ( _e.g._
| voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle
| on its own.
| text0404 wrote:
| to clarify: the leftmost bloc eschews identity politics
| because they are first and foremost anti-capitalist and
| believe that identity politics are a wedge issue designed
| to distract from class struggle (which is to say, they
| still address issues like systemic
| racism/misogyny/bigotry/etc which perpetuate wide-scale
| societal inequality but care less about politics which
| center individual identity). because they are anti-
| capitalist, they also focus on wages and are heavily pro-
| worker and pro-union (pro-labor). in foreign policy, they
| advocate for liberation movements which they believe are
| part of a global class struggle.
|
| the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right
| as they frequently side with conservative policies and
| are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to
| include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie
| Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics
| under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished.
| these people are very much for identity politics because
| they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the
| fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost
| causes but will abandon them when it is politically
| expedient (AOC, Bernie).
|
| the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons.
| the party has always catered to these folks but more
| recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward.
| this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a
| rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right
| because they believe it will lead to electoral gains
| (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.
|
| the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic
| party, and in fact despise the Democrats. they largely do
| not participate in federal electoral politics.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It's always funny when people call American liberals
| center-right, it's like an accidental dog-whistle that
| tells you exactly where they're getting their information
| and their "analysis" from
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| You can legitimately shade a multidimensional object to a
| single dimension without being untrue nor even biased.
| The point is such a cross-cultural comparison is mostly
| useless. Identify themes and interests versus
| unobservable beliefs.
| text0404 wrote:
| american liberals are for neoliberal markets which
| _alone_ puts them to the right of their global
| counterparts. besides hollow support for socialized
| healthcare, they 've put forward no meaningful reforms
| which would lead to it (besides the ACA which is
| dismantled more and more every year), they take large
| donations from corporate donors and are largely aligned
| with capital (see weakening of Dodd-Frank, Gramm-Leach-
| Bliley), they frequently support military interventions
| and large amounts of defense spending (see Iraq war,
| interventions in Yemen, Libya, Syria), give lipservice to
| pro-immigration but in action are largely anti-immigrant
| (see deportations under Obama and Biden), and compromise
| on core issues like abortion and LGBT rights. that's just
| a few examples.
|
| do you have anything of substance to share, or is this
| what passes for intellectual discourse on HN these days?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the leftmost bloc eschews identity politics because
| they are first and foremost anti-capitalist and believe
| that identity politics are a wedge issue designed to
| distract from class struggle_
|
| This is a _very_ narrow slice of urban leftists. When it
| comes to electioneering, the messaging is almost always
| about identity politics and anti-corporatism more than
| class-struggle politics.
|
| > _they largely do not participate in federal electoral
| politics_
|
| Then it isn't a bloc. Non-voter non-donors are
| politically irrelevant.
| text0404 wrote:
| yeah fair, the leftmost folks are not really involved in
| party-level messaging at all.
|
| i disagree that they're a narrow slice and aren't a bloc,
| though. in federal politics sure but in local politics
| they're more active and there's much more alignment with
| Democratic politicians (and more pragmatism).
| Aloisius wrote:
| Anti-corporatocracy, not anti-corporatism. A fair chunk
| of the left, if not the majority, is very much in favor
| of Corporatism (Tripartism and/or social corporatism like
| the Nordic model).
| consteval wrote:
| A few of them held up signs and some were kicked out. Yes,
| actually - some of our legislatures were removed from the
| premises for silently protesting!
| dylan604 wrote:
| The individual kicked out was not silently protesting. At
| least get the facts straight
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop using HN primarily for political battle?
| That's not allowed here, regardless of what politics you're for
| or against.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (This is not a comment on the current story, or any story.)
| allears wrote:
| Paywall
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-a...
| tetraven wrote:
| https://archive.is/JEYep
| dbl000 wrote:
| This was such a weird news story to read. At least they used
| Signal? That's gotta be a plus at some level.
|
| Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns
| is doing now?
| tptacek wrote:
| It's unlikely that there is one.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The basic Signal vulnerability even if the protocol is
| perfectly sound is that they can push effectively silent
| automatic app updates to do whatever. Presumably they didn't
| want to signup for this but that's how app distribution works
| nowadays, and it's certainly not fit for classified
| information.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Signal is primarily for end-to-end encryption.
|
| If a device has been compromised, the database can be extracted
| with all messages and contacts
| alistairSH wrote:
| How is that a plus? Maybe vs plain old SMS...
|
| But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium
| explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time
| (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer),
| when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to
| be retained.
| yks wrote:
| > How is that a plus?
|
| They could've used Telegram /s. It's popular with the crypto
| crowd after all.
| rasz wrote:
| They probably do also use Telegram https://www.forbes.com/s
| ites/daveywinder/2025/03/22/russian-...
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Manafort used Telegram extensively. The only messages
| used against him in court were iCloud backups of
| WhatsApp.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Is it wild that a 3rd party app like Signal is used for this type
| of communication? I feel like that's crazy.
| danso wrote:
| From the story:
|
| _I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not
| uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on
| Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and
| other logistical matters--not for detailed and highly
| confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of
| course, I've never heard of an instance in which a journalist
| has been invited to such a discussion._
|
| _Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-
| related action over Signal, may have violated several
| provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of
| "national defense" information, according to several national-
| security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for
| this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical
| scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal
| thread for the express purpose of sharing information with
| Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did
| not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them
| specifically what had occurred._
|
| _All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not
| establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about
| an active operation would presumably fit the law's definition
| of "national defense" information. The Signal app is not
| approved by the government for sharing classified information._
| neverokay wrote:
| If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, one could argue external
| state actors could have convinced the Trump admin their
| provided forms of communication are tapped, so they should
| consider alternatives. Such a state actor would know the
| alternatives are compromised well in advance by them.
| richardatlarge wrote:
| that's tinker tailor soldier spy
| outer_web wrote:
| "Your comms are tapped by records laws."
|
| "Good enough for me!"
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, it is illegal (because of the auto-deleting messages) and
| explicitly against the rules that every one of these people
| mandates for their own employees. All of them know that federal
| records must be preserved, and you have to manually turn on
| Signal's auto-deletion feature, so this is obviously
| intentional criminal activity.
| cmurf wrote:
| Early on they fired the national archivist, and deputy
| archivist.
|
| If what you're doing isn't wrong, why not record all of it
| for history?
| nunez wrote:
| Yes.
|
| When you get a clearance, it is inculcated upon you that you
| absolutely do not leak cleared information. If you THINK
| something cleared, it's best to treat it like it is.
|
| It's possible that there is some 10D chess happening here, but
| I wouldn't expect details like this to be approved for apps
| like Signal.
| 9dev wrote:
| Can we stop with the nth-D chess nonsense? This
| administration proves day by day that no advanced tactics are
| going on, it's literally just clueless idiots improvising
| because they're way out of their league but are too self-
| absorbed to step back.
| cmurf wrote:
| Can we stop with the clueless idiots nonsense? Some are
| that. The POTUS is also insane. Many more are much, much
| worse.
|
| Marco Rubio absolutely knows due process is a right for all
| persons subject to U.S. law. It's not only a right for
| citizens, and having taken this right away from persons, in
| no meaningful way can it be said it's preserves for
| citizens.
|
| The federal government is at best in abeyance. And an
| adversary at worst.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Clueless is the wrong word. Calculated is.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Remember Hanlon's Razor, never attribute to malice that
| which is adequately explained by stupidity.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| While I like this razor, it's overbroad. Malicious people
| can always say 'oopsie, I have no clue what I'm doing
| lol'. Also, you can have people who are both malicious
| _and_ stupid.
|
| Conversely, we know some people are not stupid. I dislike
| marco Rubio's politics for example, but he's a smart guy
| and widely considered to be competent. And as an attorney
| and a US Senator of long experience in intelligence
| matters, there's no way he's unaware of the legal
| implications of using a self-destructing messaging
| channel.
| matwood wrote:
| People often mysteriously turn into idiots when their job
| depends on it.
| nunez wrote:
| That was me reaching REALLY REALLY deeply to find _any_
| reason why some of our most powerful leaders would make an
| obvious blunder like this.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Initially it's exactly now I thought they would try spin
| it. They still might.
| yubblegum wrote:
| No worries. DNI was in the chat room. Also we have no idea nor
| can we know if this is the first use of Signal by this or other
| administrations. We only know because someone goofed up.
|
| So, let me say the quiet part aloud, the presence of DNI & NSC
| heavies indicates to me that Signal is possibly not really a
| "3rd party".
| danso wrote:
| Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And
| unfortunately, one that we're unlikely to get much transparency
| about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to
| happen.
|
| > _At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled "Pete Hegseth" posted in
| Signal a "TEAM UPDATE." I will not quote from this update, or
| from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in
| them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States,
| could conceivably have been used to harm American military and
| intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East,
| Central Command's area of responsibility. What I will say, in
| order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal
| conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational
| details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information
| about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack
| sequencing._
|
| > _...The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly
| real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly
| impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal
| group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic
| notification to the group's creator, "Michael Waltz," that I had
| left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there.
| And I received no subsequent questions about why I left--or, more
| to the point, who I was_
| belter wrote:
| Is this worst than using Top Secret documents as toilet paper?
|
| https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-C...
| alistairSH wrote:
| Possibly, yes, as these messages leaked details of ongoing
| military operations.
| asdff wrote:
| I never realized before with this photo, but space was
| actually made to still use the toilet sitting in that room
| with the tower of boxes 6 inches from your face. Straight out
| of a comedy sketch, almost too perfectly staged with the
| gaudy lights, stool colored formica, and $2 walmart shower
| curtain with the pressure fit rod right into the plaster. A
| shame for all of us that the photo came out of real life and
| not satire.
| ornornor wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance but what's the context of this picture? I
| don't watch the news fwiw.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| After he left office in 2021, it was found that Trump kept
| boxes and boxes of top secret files at his residence,
| including in the bathroom among other places. Somehow this
| is not an issue for the GOP.
| nerdix wrote:
| I believe that is a picture the FBI took when they raided
| Mar-a-Lago and found the top secret documents that Trump
| took when he left office after his first term.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| These are files that he took, said he returned, refused
| to return, denied the existence of, then claimed that he
| declassified telepathically, in that order
| belter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_search_of_Mar-a-Lago
| nunez wrote:
| There's a lot of useless junk that's cleared by association
| outer_web wrote:
| Are you saying he only took meaningless stuff? Lol.
| nunez wrote:
| No; I'm saying that there is a lot of useless junk that
| has a clearance. I did not say that taking boxes and
| boxes and boxes of cleared materials into a likely-
| uncleared site was okay (it most definitely isn't).
| outer_web wrote:
| I appreciate the clarification. I hope you'll understand
| the confusion created by offering a fact that does not
| apply to the current discussion.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And
| unfortunately, one that we're unlikely to get much transparency
| about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed
| to happen.
|
| I have a theory that's well backed by history: when your sole
| qualification for applicants for important positions in any
| organization is how well they fondle your balls, you often miss
| other important data points: for example, if they can use
| messaging apps correctly.
| ipython wrote:
| Don't worry - this massive fuckup will surely spark numerous
| congressional investigations, resignations, and trigger serious
| reflection by the administration on their security protocols so
| they will comply with the necessary recordkeeping laws,
| confidentiality and proper handling of classified information
| in the future.
|
| Oh who am I kidding.
|
| Less than 8h later: "it's just an oopsie right? No harm no
| foul- nothing to see here folks" https://www.politico.com/live-
| updates/2025/03/24/congress/mi...
| dralley wrote:
| >Less than 8h later: "it's just an oopsie right? No harm no
| foul- nothing to see here folks"
| https://www.politico.com/live-
| updates/2025/03/24/congress/mi...
|
| Oh, much worse than that.
| https://x.com/Acyn/status/1904309995019411933
|
| Despite the fact that the NSC already said it appears to be
| legitimate, Hegseth is going into full attack mode against
| the "discredited, so-called journalist".
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| Would be great to live in a world where nearly every voter
| that saw the NSC response and then the Hegseth response
| could see the clear contradiction in responses and then
| make the correct interpretation that whenever these clowns
| are crying about hoaxes and lying media they are full of
| shit and 100% in CYA-mode so you should never trust them
| when they do this on any topic.
|
| Of course, we don't live in that world.
| esalman wrote:
| Move fast and break things bro
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Why Silicon Valley and Washington DC should stay on
| different sides of the country
| esalman wrote:
| Agree. Washington DC in fact provides all the incentives
| silicon valley needs to flourish. It's just that silicon
| valley needs more self awareness and stay out of
| politics.
| kayge wrote:
| I've already seen at least two posts on X with claims that
| this was actually all intentional and that "Trump is playing
| 5D chess"... and I think they were serious.
| therealpygon wrote:
| Sadly, were this a different administration, they would have
| already declared an investigation with a goal to impeach a
| president. Such a ridiculous double-standard with clear
| partisanship on display. "Both sides"...
| impendingchange wrote:
| Almost as bad as a private email server being used for
| governmental business.
| ohthatsnotright wrote:
| Oh this administration does that, too.
| giardini wrote:
| No, that was intentional.
|
| This incident was an accident.
| Epa095 wrote:
| How was the signal group an accident? It's not (just)
| adding the journalist which is the problem, it's using a
| non-approve communication platform for sensitive
| information.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| "People have gone to jail for 1/100th of what - even
| 1/1,000th of what Hillary Clinton did." -Hegseth
|
| "How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government
| emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted
| for having documents he could declassify?" - Waltz
|
| "Nobody is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton - even
| though she thinks she is," -Rubio
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I always ask MAGA people why Clinton wasn't prosecuted by
| the Trump administration over this, and have never received
| a clear reply, if I got a reply at all.
| gmerc wrote:
| But her emails!
| belter wrote:
| No consequences: "Trump stands by national security adviser
| Mike Waltz despite disclosing military plans" -
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-stands-na...
| techterrier wrote:
| but her emails
| legitster wrote:
| The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is
| crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying:
|
| On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe".
| But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so
| they could move before other actors and take credit.
|
| > "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great
| cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in
| return."
|
| So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month,
| they instead _explicitly choose_ to act decisively for political
| reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European
| allies over it.
| dtquad wrote:
| The US is primarily attacking Houthis to support Israel and not
| Europe. Vance knows that.
|
| J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his
| speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages.
| Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha
| Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming
| meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, I'm pretty sure this is actually about shipping lanes and
| freedom of navigation. Israel doesn't need the help.
|
| If you read the story, one of their _concerns_ is that if
| they don 't act, Israel was going to instead.
| jacquesm wrote:
| So no, then it clearly wasn't about shipping lanes and
| freedom of navigation but just about taking the credit.
| After all if Israel was going to do it instead it could
| simply be solved by waiting a little bit. These guys are
| super transactional and they were afraid they missed the
| moment that would allow them to take credit and use it as
| coin for exchange.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm not interested in litigating Israel with you, sorry.
| yubblegum wrote:
| Israel tried already if you recall and clearly they
| couldn't though they certainly tried their hand at shock
| and awing. The transactional aspect is vis-a-vis Egypt.
|
| https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-officials-warn-
| egypts-m...
|
| https://www.jns.org/israel-challenges-egypt-on-secret-
| sinai-...
|
| Egypt is bleeding money because of loss of transit fees.
| However, this Muslim Brotherhood wary nation is not keen
| on the announced ethnic cleansing in Gaza (to Sinai). So
| this could be inducement to have them host an open air
| concentration camp with guarantees that navigation
| through the Suez Canal will resume.
| timewizard wrote:
| J.D. Vance is less of a person and more of a living proxy for
| the will of Peter Theil.
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| Co-incidence?
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fcpa-anti-bribery-law-
| exe...
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Bailing out europe when us is the cause of so many troubles in
| middle east (and not only that, or at least contributed to it)
| is deeply ironic
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| The US has veto'd ceasefire calls in the UN Security Council
| which European countries have been in favour of (or at least
| abstained).
|
| Yes, Europe benefits from the strait more than the US, but it
| isn't Europe's mess in the first place.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| I disagree. The root cause is obviously Israel founding
| which was the the last colonial project that Western
| European countries undertook.
|
| I predict that in the next decades Europe will cut ties
| with Israel completely but until then we reap what we sow.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| True, but they can only do it with the US backing.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a
| month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for
| political reasons.
|
| This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state
| actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on
| earth where the government altering timing of something for
| political convenience would be surprising?
|
| The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about
| the government discussing its own best interests and acting in
| them is the least abnormal thing here.
| e44858 wrote:
| How was it verified?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| By the bombings taking place at the time specified and the
| government verifying that someone was indeed added to a chat
| mistakenly.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's been acknowledged by the government that this happened.
| They aren't denying anything, and are saying it was just a
| mistake. From WSJ:
|
| > House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions
| about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing
| the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that
| included a journalist. "Clearly I think the administration
| has acknowledged it was a mistake and they'll tighten up and
| make sure it doesn't happen again."
|
| https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-us-
| war-...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://x.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1904221405618577650
|
| > [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the
| message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and
| we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the
| chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and
| thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The
| ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that
| there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national
| security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
|
| And from the article, practical verification:
|
| > According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first
| detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45
| p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket
| parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi
| targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and
| searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across
| Sanaa, the capital city.
|
| And today, confirmation from Trump:
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-stands-
| na...
|
| > "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he's a good man,"
| Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
|
| > When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be
| added to the Signal chat, Trump said, "It was one of
| Michael's people on the phone. A staffer had his number on
| there."
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The wilder thing is people are surprised this is happening.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| It's actually kind of a relief to at least confirm that these
| cronies would work like this. I.e. whatever they have in store
| they will probably end up shooting themselves in the foot.
|
| Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant
| country by Star War technology.
|
| Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and
| awful and just so so so stupid.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| This is an insane story demonstrating extraordinary incompetence,
| not to mention revealing some rather comical beliefs about
| American exceptionalism.
|
| It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags.
| During any other administration, such a _disastrously_ ,
| criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of
| the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically
| incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is
| just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal
| bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what
| they're doing.
|
| Also...but her emails!
|
| Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to
| move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can
| feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.
|
| Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Not just days - months.
|
| We saw A1 headlines for months about Clinton's emails. Often
| daily.
| otterley wrote:
| The top story on Fox News right now is "Trump allies move to
| prevent 'activist judges' from overstepping presidential
| authority." This story isn't even on the front page.
| vwcx wrote:
| To be fair, it broke as an exclusive to the Atlantic about
| 180 minutes ago. The NYT now has it "above the fold" on their
| front page. Unlike a story coming directly from a public
| source, it sometimes takes a bit longer to spin up re-
| reporting on another outlet's scoop like this.
| otterley wrote:
| Good point. It's now the top story on WSJ as well.
| alistairSH wrote:
| And FoxNews has the Hegseth "nuh uh, no we didn't"
| statement above the fold and the actual news in small
| print. Le Sigh.
| dekhn wrote:
| It was a couple hours later (on Fox).
| bloopernova wrote:
| Use https://news.ycombinator.com/active as your starting point.
| It's not linked from the front page.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Thanks, and also thanks to moderators for offering it
| notadoomer236 wrote:
| They use signal. They added the wrong person to the chat. Oh
| well. There's no real disaster here. No real operational
| details exposed. Just some politicking that surprises no one.
| ipython wrote:
| Did you read TFA? Operational details _were shared on the
| chat_ but the journalist, out of concern for exactly what you
| describe, _redacted those details from his report_.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on
| Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group--which, at the time,
| included me--"We are currently clean on OPSEC."
|
| Simply incredible. This is wild.
| rasz wrote:
| he said similar thing on his confirmation hearing
|
| "My commitment is to not touch alcohol while I have this
| position"
| outer_web wrote:
| Lol the most liar-y way to phrase it.
| dartharva wrote:
| This is just unreal. Ridiculous!
| ahaferburg wrote:
| That is absolutely wild. How is this not on the front page?
| belter wrote:
| HN front page is curated manually.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't believe your statement is accurate.
|
| [Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang
| picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek
| interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment
| on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as
| being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the
| front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes
| and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter
| meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I
| read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's
| version.]
| tptacek wrote:
| It is (it's a combination of manual and community inputs)
| but almost certainly the reason this isn't on the front
| page is that lots of people flag stories about the Trump
| administration. I didn't flag this one (it's too juicy, and
| has a Signal connection) but I flag most of the other ones.
| asdff wrote:
| Why flag any and not just see what the community engages
| with? You don't have to participate in threads about
| subjects you aren't interested in, you know. And the
| expectation that this is somehow taking time from the
| community who would otherwise be engaging in threads you
| are more interested in yourself, is a little, well, self
| centered to me.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm going to keep flagging all of them, because these
| stories are all activating and attract tons of upvotes
| and comments, filling the front page with repetitive
| recapitulations of the same tired arguments. It's not
| what HN is for.
| asdff wrote:
| Is it not for discussing topics of interest to the
| community?
| tptacek wrote:
| It's for discussing _on-topic_ topics of interest to the
| community, where _on-topic_ specifically excludes "most
| stories about politics", which is a very easy to bar to
| clear when the stories you're flagging are literally
| duplicative of stories with hundreds or thousands of
| comments on them already.
| neverokay wrote:
| Because they are long-running discussions, it's not
| repetitive. When we allow Rust or JS threads to keep
| popping up, it's because we evolve with the topic over
| time and continuously discuss it.
|
| What the HN shadow mod team is doing is killing the
| possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on
| important topics.
| pvg wrote:
| Rust and JS threads are on topic for the site, most
| current events stuff is not.
|
| _is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving
| discourse on important topics._
|
| These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN
| the last couple of months by a massive margin. The
| quality of 'discourse' has been abysmal so we know
| empirically the 'evolution' theory/hope is misplaced.
| MegaButts wrote:
| > These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN
| the last couple of months by a massive margin.
|
| Have any of these topics managed to not be censored via
| flagging? From my perspective, I have very much wanted to
| talk about these things on HN and despite checking
| multiple times a day I have never been able to engage in
| an ongoing discussion (by which I mean the post wasn't
| removed from the front page due to flagging, effectively
| limiting the visibility it would otherwise get from
| organic upvotes).
|
| You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them.
| And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse
| with your gatekeeping. The problem with flagging is it
| gives more weight to a smaller group. I don't know the
| weighing exactly, but I'd guess flagging is 10-100x more
| effective than regular voting. So in theory just 1-10% of
| people have the ability to censor topics they don't like.
| Kinda seems like the antithesis of what's "interesting"
| to me. And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer
| contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics than
| not being allowed to discuss it in good faith at all.
| tptacek wrote:
| The "smaller group" here is anyone with over 500 karma.
| You're going to have to find some other place to have
| "contentious go-fuck-yourself arguments" --- about
| literally anything --- because they are anathema to
| curious conversation, which is the overriding goal of
| this site. That goal isn't changing just because we're
| all activated about politics right now, just like it
| wasn't in 2017.
| MegaButts wrote:
| We just fundamentally disagree. From my perspective you
| are the antithesis of curious conversation by censoring
| topics _you_ don 't want to discuss. I don't want to read
| the latest update on some dumb framework but I don't flag
| the post.
|
| Also getting 500 karma on HN isn't hard.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, my point is, it's not in fact a small group of
| people.
| MegaButts wrote:
| Getting 500 karma is a trivial task and not some tiny
| group. Are there any HN regulars (that don't just lurk)
| that don't have that much karma?
|
| The point is a flag has higher weight than an upvote, and
| it's easy to get the ability to flag posts.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, again, my point: the cohort of people who can be
| flagging these articles is quite large. It's not a small
| number of gatekeeping old-timers.
| MegaButts wrote:
| dang has admitted that flagging carries more weight than
| voting, we just don't know what the weighing is.
| tptacek wrote:
| Sure, sounds right.
| MegaButts wrote:
| So then it's not an equal flagging vs equal upvoting,
| it's fewer flags by fewer people being able to derail a
| post off the front page which may have been upvoted by
| 10x or 100x as many people as flagged it.
|
| The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just
| makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor
| certain topics.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's worked this way for 1,492 years (in Internet years)
| and mostly for the best. When stories get flagged
| inappropriately, you email Dan, and he usually fixes it.
| Seems good to me.
|
| Because it's very longstanding precedent, you're going to
| have to do more than just notice it out loud for the
| first time to change it.
|
| For what it's worth, I didn't just not flag this story,
| or even just upvote it; I _submitted_ it (and was beaten
| to the punch). It 's a good HN story! But I can
| absolutely understand why the Trump-Story-Flaggers would
| have reflexively flagged this story. These threads are
| incredibly tedious and corrosive to the community.
| MegaButts wrote:
| I realize this website has operated more or less the same
| for a long time. But as it becomes increasingly popular
| it's going to become a bigger target for abuse by people
| wanting to push a narrative. I'm just commenting on why
| it's been more frustrating for me lately than it has in
| the past.
|
| There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just
| critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to
| me (and many other people who have complained about it
| recently), it's getting worse.
| pvg wrote:
| Another thing it's been it's been for a long time is
| "increasingly popular". If anything, groupthink and
| common narrative are easier on a smaller site.
| Teever wrote:
| There's this strain of navel gazing on this size where
| people think that they talk about productive shit and
| this is somehow a better site than other social media
| sites because 'we don't talk about politics or
| celebrities, we talk about curiousity!'
|
| But people on HN upvote and argue about California zoning
| laws or San Francisco drug policy here, AI policies from
| the US federal government or the DMA from the EU. Or the
| SLS rocket. It's all politics.
|
| Sam Altman and PG are the celebrities here, not the
| Kardashians and people never stop talking about poops on
| San Francisco streets as if this is an important issue
| for the US or international community of the site.
|
| 'political' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and
| there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and
| not talked about here.
| tptacek wrote:
| I would be shocked if anyone came up with a new argument
| about this dynamic, which has been argued about since the
| earliest days of the site.
| Teever wrote:
| I'll tell you the new argument about this dynamic -- the
| US is tanking hard and the influence of sites like HN is
| going to wane and will inevitably be replaced by European
| sites.
|
| People outside of the bay area and outside of the US are
| tired of this crap.
| tptacek wrote:
| Don't threaten me with a good time! I'd love it if there
| were more places like HN. I like Lobsters, but it's too
| insular. Start Euro-HN!
|
| I think Dan is an amazing moderator, one of the all-time
| greats, but there are lots of different moderation
| arrangements that can work, and different goals for
| forums to have. What I like are forums! Not just this
| forum.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > I'll tell you the new argument about this dynamic --
| the US is tanking hard and the influence of sites like HN
| is going to wane and will inevitably be replaced by
| European sites.
|
| I'd much prefer it be replaced by something
| led/focused/moderated out of the Global South....if I
| didn't loathe the idea of doing content moderation
| myself, maybe I'd fire up a HN-clone marketed in those
| other regions...
| pvg wrote:
| My argument isn't about 'political' at all, neither are
| the public moderator's main arguments.
| defrost wrote:
| A better question is:
|
| Have any of these topics managed to be censored via
| flagging?
|
| They are all still present, a good many are still active
| .. you seem to equate "not on front page" with
| "censored".
|
| See:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/active
|
| and (for example DOGE, last month): https://hn.algolia.co
| m/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
| pvg wrote:
| These stories have been on the front page multiple times,
| yes.
|
| _You 're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag
| them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN
| worse with your gatekeeping._
|
| I like these topics just fine. I don't particularly like
| them filling up HN because HN is pretty bad at them and
| it's bad at them in a pointedly tedious, repetitive way.
| "pointedly tedious and repetitive" is the most offtopic
| thing on HN. But for any story you feel should get more
| exposure, you can email the site mods and make the case
| for it. This happens all the time.
|
| _And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go
| fuck yourself" arguments on politics_
|
| Well, as you say, you're entitled to prefer that but
| that's not the sort of messageboard this is. But again,
| you can make the case for changing that but it seems
| pretty uphill. Yelly messageboards are a dime a dozen and
| many HN participants are here because this one is
| slightly less yelly.
| Teever wrote:
| Dude there was a post about George Foreman's obituary the
| other day...
|
| Like c'mon.
|
| I'm pretty sure that your pretentiousness just invited a
| shitstorm of people who are going to flag your posts from
| now on.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Yeah everyone gets self righteous about being on topic
| when it's something they don't like, meanwhile hacker
| news is filled with cheap self promotion and pop culture
| news that people use as a writing prompt to have a
| competition for who can claim it impacted them the most.
| belter wrote:
| In the front page number 8 is 19 points - 3 hours ago | 1
| comment
|
| number 30 is 38 points 16 hours ago | 0 comments
|
| number 7 is 13 points | 3 comments
|
| This one has 142 points and 35 comments in 2 hours. Is
| neither on the first or second page.
|
| What is the logic?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > What is the logic?
|
| The logic is that people have flagged it, but not enough
| for it to be marked [flagged], which downranks it. dang,
| if notified or interested in it himself, could turn off
| flagging for this submission which would likely bring it
| back to the front page (given comment activity, age, and
| current score). You could email him and ask nicely.
|
| You've been on this site for 4 years with 57k karma so
| you must be very active here, I'm surprised you don't
| know this yet.
| neverokay wrote:
| It's not about whether the person knows or not. It's more
| about that the person can't believe this is happening
| even if it follows all the norms that we're all supposed
| to know about, apparently.
|
| In other words, just because such a system could be used
| in this way, is it good that it _is_ being used this way?
| That's the energy this is coming from.
|
| But I agree with your premise, even in its snark, none of
| us are stupid - we should already know.
| _tk_ wrote:
| As far as I know, if submissions get flagged they get
| downranked. Not sure about the details.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's not currently flagged, though. (Or at least, it's not
| currently marked [flagged].)
| llm_nerd wrote:
| dang has detailed this before. After so many flags vs
| upvotes, a post is pushed to the bottom of the third page
| or top of four page of results. This is is before the
| [flagged] state is reached. You can often find highly
| upvoted but "politically contentious" submissions at
| position 90 or above.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Or use https://news.ycombinator.com/active
|
| It's not linked from the homepage though.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| To what end? How is this newsworthy any more? It has the
| President's blessing - that's all you need now.
|
| If literally storming your government building, threating your
| representatives and injuring police officers isn't punishable
| any more what is?
| neverokay wrote:
| It does really feel like we are men watching our women and
| children accosted. We feel impotent as the public currently.
| timeon wrote:
| Omerta.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear
| after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about
| whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text
| messages about official acts are considered records that should
| be preserved.
|
| I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid
| preservation of records.
| neverokay wrote:
| The DoD or Pentagon don't have their own messaging apps? Maybe
| our government doesn't spend enough on tech. To me this is the
| same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these
| are not exactly world war level apps.
|
| Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one.
| A veritable board room of talking heads that don't ever really
| talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw
| commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
| burkaman wrote:
| Of course they do, but you can't set official government apps
| to illegally delete messages after a week.
|
| Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams htt
| ps://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-....
| Also -
|
| > When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business
| cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS
| texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such
| cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an
| official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within
| 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in
| accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component
| processes. The complete copy of the record includes the
| content of the message and required metadata, and the record
| must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the
| applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of
| the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD
| users are provided guidance on their Component's processes
| for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS
| texts.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Weren't they told to stop using SMS due to Salt Typhoon?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > not exactly world war level apps.
|
| And what is?
| neverokay wrote:
| A face to face meeting in a bunker. But seriously, we
| pondered the psychological damage of those who are drone
| operators. How is this different? There should be more
| ceremony when making decisions like this, not an afternoon
| group chat. Dress for it, look yourself in the face for it.
| Be present.
|
| I'll just say one thing about this administration. It is
| often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then
| it's possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep
| adding to the list, but I'm suggesting the inductive proof
| here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is
| scary.
| cteiosanu wrote:
| And women
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| They removed all the women several weeks ago.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Tulsi Gabbard was in the chat.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| The smartest people who ever lived worked on mid-century
| Cold War strategy, which was non-partisan. Von Neumann,
| Thomas Schelling, etc. The Secretary of Defense is
| supposed to be the best possible communicator of those
| ideas to the President, at all hours of the day. You and
| I and everyone else in this thread know what crystal-
| forming pressure that meant for SECDEF in the 1960s.
| Nowadays, half of those potential qualities (for this
| President) come from just being seen on Fox News; he's
| already "dressed for it".
|
| But Hegseth is such an _average_ person. With charisma,
| he could aw-shucks his way past the media. Unlike
| McNamara, Hegseth is not charged with proving how
| important a competent SECDEF is. Maybe even demonstrating
| how arbitrary the standard can be given such an average
| person can just, well, phone it in.
|
| While it's true that no sum of such average people will
| ever approach one John Von Neumann, it's not fair to
| blame an average person with some self-awareness for
| their _every_ flaw. Which is why Hegseth 's denials move
| the needle from "forgivable mistakes expected from Joe
| Blow" to "history-making example of Dunning-Kruger".
| nunez wrote:
| They do, and they are certified for this kind of
| communication.
|
| Is Signal even FedRAMP? I don't think it is.
| maronato wrote:
| The obvious follow up is what else do they illegally delete?
|
| If they're doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will
| eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal
| activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are
| they automatically deleting?
|
| Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren't targeting US officials
| phones and Signal, now they certainly are.
| pstuart wrote:
| > what else do they illegally delete?
|
| Likely everything they can. Rules are for fools in this
| admin.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| SO much for 'the most transparent administration in history',
| not that I bought into that claim in the first place. Seems
| like a violation of multiple public record-keeping laws.
| hypeatei wrote:
| You can already guess what consequences they're going to
| face: none.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Nevertheless, the Democrats should move to impeach. The
| fact that they probably won't be able to get a vote taken
| (never mind win one) is beside the point.
| nine_k wrote:
| Why only Democrats? Any patriots, which, I suppose,
| should be somehow represented among Republicans, too.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| Duh, but we're obviously past the point of Republicans
| acting in good faith.
| nine_k wrote:
| Some people put their conscience above their party
| affiliation. There's a ton of Republicans unhappy with,
| and even infuriated by Trump. Not many of them in
| Congress though.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| If you are a Republican but don't like Trump, they will
| call you a RINO and ostracize, that's the strategy.
| jillyboel wrote:
| Why isn't anyone protesting?
| entropic88 wrote:
| I'd hope those currently toeing the line but know deep
| down we're at the point of ludicrous egregiousness would
| shoot their shot, if given the opportunity. I'd like to
| believe at least 20% of elected Republicans lack brain
| damage.
| watwut wrote:
| If they would be inclined to do so, it would already
| happened, here and there in small issues.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. Sad to say
| I'm not holding my breaths on Democrats actually doing
| anything about it either.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| At this point, it's blatantly obvious that no one should
| ever file articles of impeachment without a reasonable
| certainty that the votes to convict exist in the Senate.
|
| Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to
| further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump
| and future Presidents more confidence that they can do
| anything they want and never be held to account.
| genter wrote:
| > further discredit the idea of impeachment
|
| Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is
| a big if), it can educate people on the current
| situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of
| people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous
| Trump and his cronies are.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I strongly disagree. Even if the votes aren't there, the
| accusation can be put on the public record. Doing nothing
| until there are sufficient votes is far more 'stage
| management' that obscures the legislative decision-making
| process from the public. You are asking for the
| appearance of consensus and dismissing actual
| conflict/disagreement as 'theater'.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Every failed impeachment encourages future bad actors not
| to worry about impeachment.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| transparent but also ephemeral
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Please FOIA the administration's process for meeting records
| requirements while using Signal. People need to call them out
| on this or nothing happens.
| brazzy wrote:
| They are far, far beyond the point where "calling them out"
| does anything at all. They are blatantly, openly, violating
| the constitution and ignoring laws and court orders.
|
| The only thing left that stands a chance of stopping them
| is mass violence.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Thankfully done, at some scale, https://bsky.app/profile/na
| tionalsecuritylaw.org/post/3ll5cd...
|
| It is such a horror that this government is operating off
| the books, that this administration will again leave behind
| only empty pages in the history book where normally the
| government would have ownership of what transpired.
| mindslight wrote:
| But they _are_ extremely transparent. All of their actions
| are clearly in furtherance of corruption, stealing, and
| helping Russia (and China) destroy the United States.
|
| Unfortunately we also live in the time with the largest mass
| media consumption (social media), all but guaranteeing their
| followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of
| talking points rather than understanding straightforward
| criticism said by someone on the "other" team.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| > _...all but guaranteeing their followers keep
| rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points
| rather than understanding any criticism said by someone on
| the "other" team_
|
| To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be
| the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows
| politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their
| actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment,
| and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this
| administration destroying what's left of the country.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| They are transparent! They give the info directly to the
| press before anyone else! /s
| Philadelphia wrote:
| It's not just social media. What enabled things to get to
| this point was Fox News, which was created specifically to
| do that.
|
| " In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon
| aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that
| would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-
| administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy,"
| the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just
| sit -- watch -- listen. The thinking is done for you."
| Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters
| needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a
| brutal, vicious attack on the opposition." "
|
| https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created
| mindslight wrote:
| For sure there is a much longer sweeping arc to the rabid
| anti-American performative politics of the modern
| Republican party. My point was that social media now
| means that people are saturated in more media consumption
| than ever, with the double punch of much of it being cast
| as coming from many other people they know.
|
| For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would
| have been possible to get across the point that Breonna
| Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue
| [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care,
| although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport
| to care _greatly_ , so it should be possible to engage on
| that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to
| the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day
| every day) is just too great.
|
| [0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your
| home at night is government agents unleashing a state-
| sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has
| defending your home not been effectively prohibited?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think 'blatant is a better word to describe this than
| transparent. Not keeping records of government business
| makes accountability (political or legal) impossible. But
| yes, I basically agree with your view.
| xnx wrote:
| On the other hand, directly sharing war plans with the press
| is about as transparent as you can get.
| more_corn wrote:
| I would love for them to say that. Awe heck it was about
| transparency, we're doing that from now on.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| A corollary here is that maximum pressure is being put on
| DoD to find "leakers". It now appears that to the normal
| people in DoD, what looks like evidence of regular leaking
| to the press might be incompetence at the appointee level.
| turnsout wrote:
| Wait, you're saying the Trump administration might be
| breaking a rule? Pretty wild accusation
| throw0101c wrote:
| "But her e-mails."
|
| > _It's best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a
| virtue. It's how they signal that the things they are doing
| to people were never meant to be equally applied._
|
| > _It's not an inconsistency. It's very consistent to the
| only true fascist value, which is domination._
|
| > _It's very important to understand, fascists don't just see
| hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect._
|
| > _It's the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing
| you're able to deny others, because you dominate, is the
| whole point._
|
| > _For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue -- the
| greatest._
|
| * https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267
| aubanel wrote:
| Using the insult "Fascist" in every other sentence really
| diminishes whatever message was in there
| brazzy wrote:
| It's not an insult any more than "rapist" or "fraudster"
| is. These have all factual definitions, and Trump meets
| all of them.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Unfortunately the kind of people who support Trump aren't
| smart and only see adjectives as either complementary or
| as a pejorative. They don't care about what the words
| actually mean. See: "woke".
| beeflet wrote:
| I think it is pretty obvious that trump doesn't have any
| real political ambitions besides being popular and
| powerful, and seeking personal retribution against those
| who tarnish his reputation. In fact, he increasingly just
| seems like a tired old man fulfilling his political
| obligations he made in his last campaign. Even when he
| was running, he would pretty much cosy up to any
| political group that held him in high regard. He has
| always been a sleazy businessman who takes advantage of
| his brand name -- not much has changed.
|
| The idea that trump cares about "fascism", or is even
| capable of holding such high-minded political beliefs is
| some hysterical leftist nonsense. Trump is the type of
| politician that would support any topic "X" as long as
| you campaigned on the basis of "X is cool and trump is
| also cool". In our timeline X was cryptocurrency,
| antivax, Qanon, charlottesville protesters, etc. but it
| could have just as easily been environmentalists, gay
| rights activists, BLM, etc.
|
| When most people talk about facism, they are referring to
| a regime like those under hitler or mussolini. I am
| pretty sure hitler and mussolini had actual political
| goals they cared about. There will never be a "night of
| the long knives" because there is nothing that trump even
| wants that's worth backstabbing his allies over. To use
| the word fascist is ridiculous, because he is just acting
| as a ouija board for his dopey supporters.
| piva00 wrote:
| When are people allowed to call this administration
| fascist? What's the exact line they have to cross for you
| to stop gatekeeping it?
| beeflet wrote:
| I can't think of anything trump has done in this term
| which is that authoritarian. Maybe that's just the "tan
| suit" syndrome where the media reports on every little
| thing it drowns out the big picture, but nothing really
| comes to mind for me.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I'd consider discharging an entire minority group from
| the military on the basis of their identity to be pretty
| damn fascist. Also the whole y'know, threatening to
| invade and annex Canada thing.
| piva00 wrote:
| Attacking the free press isn't anything authoritarian?
| Modified3019 wrote:
| See also: "Every accusation, a confession."
| kccoder wrote:
| Trump's razor: The opposite of what he says is closer to the
| truth.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Addendum: Anything GOP accuses others of, they're doing.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| They sure do say a lot about pedophilia.
| matwood wrote:
| Someone only looks behind the door if they have stood
| there themselves.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I'd have phrased it a bit differently. If he accuses an
| "enemy" of doing something, he's saying he did that.
| matwood wrote:
| Hahaha...it has always been a farce, just like Twitter and
| Musk are for free speech and DOGE is about transparency.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| It's the whole point of using Signal and Starlink WiFi.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| One of my takeaways is that "national security secrets" really
| aren't that important. The Secretary of Defense was in on this.
| Whatever was in that chat just doesn't matter, except to manage
| the reporting on it.
|
| I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository
| he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually
| compromised.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It only "didn't matter" because the journalist had the good
| sense to keep quiet until after the operation was complete. And
| continues to keep some of the conversation secret. Imagine if
| Hegseth had accidentally CC'ed somebody aligned with Iran?
| cactacea wrote:
| https://archive.ph/AP0H4
| amai wrote:
| Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Taurus_leak
|
| ,,Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation,
| conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video
| conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military
| personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to
| blow up the Crimean Bridge."
| yencabulator wrote:
| A thing using authorized channels that was spied on by a
| different state has practically nothing in common with this.
|
| (Yes, it probably shouldn't have been an authorized channel,
| but it was.)
| realityking wrote:
| Though the channel wasn't cleared for the level of
| information that was discussed.
|
| WebEx was cleared up to the equivalent of Restricted. The
| conversation likely reached the level of Secret or Top
| Secret.
|
| Two of the generals were disciplined. (4-figure fine)
| LWIRVoltage wrote:
| <tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit:
| Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've been
| in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this."
| "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that
| didn't have better opsec than this."
|
| ..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better
| opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too...
|
| [Main comment by me - technical outlook] This is not a surprise
| at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration
| was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as
| messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping.
|
| -From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think
| people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice
| President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews
| during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three
| letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was
| secure because he used Signal) - the director of national
| intelligence- and several others- use Signal.
|
| it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently
| our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-
| sensitive stuff-
|
| But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that
| would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that
| screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which
| is a point towards Signal
|
| So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of
| course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for
| subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd
| think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the
| infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well
| especially.
|
| Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely
| KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't
| do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is
| telling.
|
| A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages,
| admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark
| Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp,
| to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack
| of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta
| to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of
| meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| Even if we are generous and assume Signal's protocols and
| entire communication infrastructure are 100% safe and cannot be
| compromised, any one single person in the group chat using
| Signal on a compromised device invalidates all of that.
|
| The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me
| personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside
| of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted
| systems.
|
| Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any
| official system they would otherwise use would have (one would
| hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak
| the conversation to a random third party.
| LWIRVoltage wrote:
| This is true absolutely
|
| One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ......
|
| There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised
| wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't
| some stuff like this occured over text messages- Because of
| everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the
| message disappearing- with this, with military branches
| pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for
| non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the
| attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if
| there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running
| that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps. (I'm reminded
| again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd
| been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but
| that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't
| know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and
| whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he
| was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't
| compromised by that.)
|
| (I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate
| than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general
| Wire tapping capability to target the VP)
|
| Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance
| somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO
| use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President
| can't be found out by the President or those more allied with
| the President who could then start retribution- I imagine
| dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are
| what absolutely drive all of this.
| blitzar wrote:
| I has long been fashionable with the kids to use
| screenshots for "proofs" - I don't believe there is any
| screenshot protections in signal.
|
| The iCloud accounts of anyone ambitious in that chat will
| be filled with in and out of context screenshots to show to
| daddy when they are in trouble next time.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not _that_ secure. If someone has a desktop signal client
| it has been possible to just access attachments via the file
| system; they were stored with obfuscated names but no
| encryption. They may have fixed this since I tested it ~6
| months ago.
| codedokode wrote:
| On desktop you can just read process memory and extract all
| the keys and tokens.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a
| vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent
| that
|
| The lack of reproducible builds for Signal's apps has been a
| topic of discussion for quite some time:
|
| https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/641
| whymeogod wrote:
| > A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages,
|
| except that the conversation in question, and similar such
| conversations, are required by federal law to be archived.
|
| So explicitly choosing a communication channel that violates
| federal law for conducting federal business is, umm, sketchy?
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| ><tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit:
| Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've
| been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than
| this." "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance
| that didn't have better opsec than this."
|
| That is some seriously selective memory
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4cdmmc/wtf_is_going_on...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4dvoj5/sma_diplosleade...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4f3epd/a_different_kin...
|
| And here's some more recent ones
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1f6t1vw/your_relays_ar...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1g3p232/alcoholic_sata...
|
| Major alliance infrastructure and security is probably better
| than most US corporations but doesn't come close to secure
| government systems, obviously
| originalvichy wrote:
| The nickname Stupid Watergate will never die
| alistairSH wrote:
| Even worse, Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge
| of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today. And
| instead of promising an investigation, the best he can do is
| throw some weak insults at The Atlantic.
|
| BUTTERY MALES indeed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it)
| until questioned at a press conference earlier today.
|
| Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to
| talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated
| knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets
| called out on or significant pushback on the implications of
| his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Well I think it's very common for representatives to not
| directly reply after a certain incident, because they don't
| have all the details yet and they want to take time to form a
| proper response. Don't see how this is specific to Trump.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I didn't say being evasive immediately after an incident
| (either to gather facts or put together a strategy) was
| specific to Trump, I said feigning ignorance including of
| material he has previously demonstrated awareness when he
| doesn't want to talk about something is a repeated pattern
| for Trump.
|
| Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping,
| behavioral patterns.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Can you give some examples? Honestly interested
| trymas wrote:
| Not OP, but https://time.com/5582741/donald-trump-never-
| met-doesnt-know/
|
| It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there's a
| scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump's
| replies often were "I barely know him/her"/"Never met
| him/her", etc.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Aha ok, but I don't think it's very applicable to this
| situation. The people he has denied to know he might have
| met them once or twice, but it's not like part of his
| administration. This situation is different.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Separately, he'll not-infrequently claim he doesn't
| remember recently saying something insane/stupid when a
| reporter asks him about it a day or two later. Sometimes
| he'll kinda smirk when he does it, so I'm pretty sure
| this one's _also_ him lying, not genuinely forgetting, at
| least much of the time (if he 's really forgetting all of
| these, that's a separate serious problem). In these
| cases, also, he rarely gets much push-back, so it's
| another example of "yes he's bullshitting, but also we're
| letting him get away with it and get what he wants, so
| why would he stop?"
| ttyprintk wrote:
| The list of lies under oath. In particular, the libel
| case he lost.
| fatbird wrote:
| By the revealed content of the chat, Trump wasn't aware of the
| decision his subordinates made. They just intuited Trump's
| wishes and dropped bombs based on that.
| Balgair wrote:
| If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this
| source.
|
| If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long
| as he could.
|
| Or, he's got other channels that work better.
|
| All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here,
| there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a
| charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.
|
| Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members
| killed due to their idiocy
| anigbrowl wrote:
| My theory is that he had to balance the journalistic scoop of
| the century with the risk of being arrested for illegally
| accessing/storing classified information. If they had noticed
| before he published the story then he could have been vanned
| and the public told that he had infiltrated a secure channel,
| and who would be able to say otherwise? MAGA people would
| cheerfully call for his execution.
| nradov wrote:
| Under US federal law it is generally not a crime for a person
| without a security clearance to receive or store classified
| information. The legal problems come in when they solicit it
| or take some other action to obtain it.
| zeven7 wrote:
| Laws matter less than they used to. When the President
| regularly uses the term "retribution" to describe his mode
| of operation, I don't blame someone for taking a more
| careful approach in a case like this. It shouldn't be that
| way, for a journalist. But a lot of things shouldn't be the
| way they are today.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Would you trust the current DOJ to handle this fairly if it
| landed in your lap?
| mostafah wrote:
| My guess is that he was consulting their lawyers during this.
| IANAL but it might have been a crime if he did not leave the
| group as soon as he was sure it was real. He keeps mentioning
| that he was not certain this is real until the first attacks.
| After the first attack, he could not continue this argument.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| He was probably worried about the legal ramifications of not
| doing so, though these days he may be more likely to get sent
| off to some El Salvadoran prison for writing the article and
| exposing their staggering incompetence than he would be for
| continuing to knowingly listen in on the chat.
| namaria wrote:
| Knowingly keeping sensitive US national security data on a
| personal phone would be a very bad idea.
| tptacek wrote:
| As soon as he realizes (or a reasonable person would realize)
| that the group chat is not a hoax, and that he is getting
| confidential military information over that channel, his
| continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent to
| receive the information, which makes anything he writes about
| it in the future legally problematic. It's complicated and it's
| not like just receiving classified information from a source is
| intrinsically criminal, but it'll be the entire fact pattern
| he'd be confronted with by prosecutors.
| overfeed wrote:
| The fourt cases related to Watergate established that
| receiving classified information is not illegal, and affirmed
| 1A rights. I'd argue it's a exactly the same as a journalist
| overhearing this motley crew discussing the war plan in the
| halls of the White House without being aware there's a
| journalist nearby. I _wouldn 't_ bank on the current supreme
| court to uphold precedence, or the current administration
| persecuting the journalist for "hacking" into a "secure"
| government chat group - which is what they'll allege without
| evidence. I suspect the journalist cares more about national
| security than the cowboys in the chat group, and is acutely
| aware that they are a target for hacking by nation-states,
| which would leak classified information.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I would bank in the current supreme court to uphold
| precedence
|
| Counting on SCOTUS to respect precedent at this point is
| either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.
| overfeed wrote:
| Oh, that was a typo. I do not trust the current supreme
| court to uphold precedence over naked partisanship.
| milesrout wrote:
| The US Supreme Court hews close to precedent. The only two
| significant overturned decisions in the last decade are Roe
| v Wade, which regardless of your views on abortion was a
| poorly reasoned decision, which was really judicial
| legislation, that had to be essentially amended several
| times (whether abortion should be permitted is a separate
| question from whether Roe was good law, which it obviously
| wasn't) and Chevron, which was contrary to the most
| fundamental principles of the rule of law (that is, that
| the interpretation of the law is a fundamentally judicial
| function).
|
| Neither were really political decisions. The SCOTUS doesn't
| split along ideological or party lines all the time. It
| often splits in different ways, and often makes decisions
| on very politically heated topics unanimously. You should
| have more confidence in it. It is the least bad of your
| three major institutions of government by far.
|
| To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and
| understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world,
| the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of
| the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous. It never
| made any sense. Its result was inevitable: a new government
| was elected and suddenly the law changed overnight because
| government departments all published their new
| "interpretations" of the law. That is just silly, it makes
| a mockery of the principles of the rule of law, and it
| gives too much power to the government. Law should be made
| by parliament (which you call congress, for some reason)
| and rulemaking powers should be explicitly delegated to
| executive agencies where appropriate. Vagueness in the law
| should be interpreted and resolved by the courts, not by
| the executive in a way that is subject to political whimsy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The only two significant overturned decisions in the
| last decade are Roe [...] and Chevron
|
| That's really not true; just a couple of the other major
| decisions overturned in the last decade:
|
| _Apodaca v. Oregon_ , holding that while the 14th
| Amendment did incorporate the right to jury trial against
| the States, it did _not_ incorporate the unanimity
| requirement that the Supreme Court has found against the
| federal government in the 6th Amendment against the
| states. (reversed in _Ramos v. Louisiana_ , 2020.)
|
| _Abood v. Detroit Board of Education_ , holding that a
| certiied public-sector union could collect an "agency
| fee" attributable to representational activities but not
| other union functions to represented non-member
| employees. Reversed by Janus v. American Federation of
| State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 (2018).
| milesrout wrote:
| Maybe instead of significant I should have said
| significantly publicly controversial, or something along
| those lines.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Snyder v. United States, where it was decided that
| 'gratuities' after the fact are not bribes.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-
| scop...
| thecopy wrote:
| >To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US
| and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the
| world, the idea of the courts deferring in their
| interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just
| ridiculous
|
| My interpretation is difficult and complex domain
| specific regulation were handled by agency experts, and
| not lawyers. It is now up to congress to detail very
| specifically this potentially difficult regulation and to
| quickly adjust when research changes.
|
| Is my interpretation incorrect? Since to me this current
| approach sounds terrible, inflexibly and set-up to fail.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Yes, it's about attacking the means by which we
| collectively hold bad actors in check. Also other
| countries absolutely do delegate regulatory minutae to
| experts. If we can delegate law making to elected
| representatives, we can do the same for regulations to
| ensure they do what is intended.
| milesrout wrote:
| No, it is about decent lawmaking. Nothing stops Congress
| from delegating regulation-making powers to agencies.
| Chevron isn't about that. Chevron didn't involve any
| delegation of anything.
|
| Chevron is about the statute saying something vague like
| "a term in a consumer credit contract is void if it is
| oppressive" and then the effective definition of the word
| "oppressive" being able to be "interpreted" by executive
| agencies at their whim with the courts being powerless to
| intervene. That is contrary to the rule of law. If there
| is a vagueness, that should be filled by a court
| supplying an interpretation and that precedent is then
| established. Law should be stable and predictable.
|
| Remember the original Chevron case was based on the EPA
| changing its interpretation of "source" of air pollution
| under the Clean Air Act 1963 to make it much narrower.
| There was no statutory power for it to do so. Nothing in
| the Act authorised it. It unilaterally changed its
| interpretation of the law, and the Court said "that is
| fine, it is ambiguous, you decide what the law is and as
| long as it is a reasonable interpretation that is fine".
| Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and
| changing their interpretation again.
| pintxo wrote:
| > Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and
| changing their interpretation again.
|
| Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament?
| They clearly have that power to change the laws they
| enacted at any time.
|
| So where is the problem if parliament delegates this
| power to some executive entity?
|
| Now, if delegation is not clearly defined, this is
| another issue I can understand. And I am not interested
| enough in the minutia of US legislation to have an
| opinion on that.
| floor2 wrote:
| > then the effective definition of the word "oppressive"
| being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies
|
| I don't get how this could ever be resolved though. You
| can complain about how "oppressive" is "interpreted" so
| they can add more words, they can say "people are harmed"
| and then it's up to interpretation about who is "people"
| and what is "harm" so then you add more words to define
| "people" as living homo-sapiens and then it's up to
| interpretation about what is "living" and on and on.
|
| > If there is a vagueness
|
| There is literally always vagueness. "I never said she
| took his money" can have 7 different interpretations just
| based on which word is emphasized.
|
| It's a meaningless tautology that any English sentence
| has some amount of vagueness and that people will be
| interpreting its meaning.
| vel0city wrote:
| > being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies at
| their whim with the courts being powerless to intervene.
|
| This isn't accurate though. You're arguing these things
| could literally change day to day, but there were
| established procedures for rule changes. Those procedures
| required posting reasons for the change, a notice
| published in the register, the chance for people to
| comment on the change, etc. When regulations changed
| without notice and without any reason given they got
| blocked from making the change.
|
| See the debates around net neutrality and FCC decisions.
| Took a lot of notices, a lot of back and forth, etc. They
| couldn't just arbitrarily change the rules from one day
| to the next.
| milesrout wrote:
| Here are two examples.
|
| First, a made up but illustrative one. The statute says
| something vague like "a term in a standard form consumer
| contract that is _oppressive_ or _unconscionable_ is
| void. " In a common law system (anything derived from
| English law, including US, Australia, etc) the meaning of
| these terms, if they aren't defined elsewhere in the
| statute, is figured out based on decided cases. Someone
| will argue that it covers a particular clause, and the
| judge will decide if it does. The judge might give a
| detailed test for what constitutes "oppressive" or might
| reuse an existing one from a different context or
| whatever. The decision might be appealed and a panel of
| judges decide the meaning. But over time, and as cases
| are decided, the meaning becomes clear. You can point to
| half a dozen examples of clearly oppressive clauses and a
| dozen that clearly aren't, there is a legal test for what
| counts, etc. The law develops towards certainty and the
| doctrine of precedent also means it stabilises: it isn't
| going to change its meaning just because new judges are
| appointed, because they generally follow precedent pretty
| closely.
|
| Under the Chevron doctrine, there is an extra step. If a
| government agency says that its interpretation is that
| "oppressive" means X, then if that interpretation is
| reasonable, if it is open on the wording of the statute,
| then the inquiry stops there. The court defers to the
| government agency. This has the benefit, admittedly, that
| the definition can change over time according to changing
| conditions. But it has downsides. It is giving the job of
| deciding what laws mean to the government, rather than
| the judiciary. The government is meant to act according
| to law, not to interpret it. That isn't the executive's
| proper function. But quite apart from the philosophical
| objections, it is no good for stability. A new government
| is elected and the official interpretation changes. This
| happens a lot. A new government is elected and it is
| decided that now "restraint of trade" clauses in
| employment contracts are legal. Four years later they're
| unenforceable. Four years layer they're enforceable
| again. No laws changed, no regulations are passed, a
| government agency just releases a new statement of its
| official interpretation of the law.
|
| That is quite different to, e.g., there being a statute
| saying "terms in consumer contracts must accord with the
| regulations promulgated by the department of consumer
| protection as in force at the date of execution of the
| contract" because:
|
| 1. It is clear what is delegated to the executive and
| what is not.
|
| 2. It is clear that the definition applied is the
| definition at the time the contract was signed, and the
| "interpretation" is not retrospective.
|
| 3. It is still up to the court to give a clear,
| consistent, precedential ruling as to the meaning of the
| regulations themselves.
|
| This example is real: _Chevron_ itself. There, the EPA
| changed the definition of "source" of air pollution,
| without Congressional approval, so that "source" was much
| narrower (making pollution harder to regulate).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Chevron was not about deciding regulation details.
|
| It was about who interprets what a law an agency
| administers means.
|
| Before Chevron, an agency could say "we interpret this
| law to mean we can do X", and then no one could stop it
| from doing X. That's a huge amount of unchecked power!
|
| Now an impartial court get to interpret what laws mean.
| Seems like the obviously right thing to me.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| The fact that this is getting downvoted into the ground
| really shows the delta between reality and what the
| members of this site want to convince themselves is
| reality.
|
| The majority of SCOTUS decisions are unanimous.
| threeseed wrote:
| Historically it has not been unanimous:
| https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/supreme-court-
| unan...
|
| And as the article says the courts have been increasingly
| looking at narrowly scoped cases that are less precedent
| changing.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party
| lines all the time.
|
| It happens enough on cases that matter that it's farcical
| not to put (R) and (D) after the names of the justices,
| for clarity, when discussing them in the press.
| itbeho wrote:
| There should be protection for people that receive
| information in this manner that is equivalent to
| whistleblower protection. No law abiding citizen should ever
| be prosecuted in favor of protecting a government fuck up.
| tptacek wrote:
| I agree. I'm remarking positively, not normatively.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| That's the part you're concerned with? Criminal liability of
| the journalist while the alcoholic was sending government
| secrets over a signal group chat to unverified members?
| danesparza wrote:
| "his continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent
| to receive the information"
|
| Nope. His authority as a journalist prevails. He published
| the article -- so his intent was to do his job as a
| journalist, and the public has a right to know.
|
| National security or institutional trust was not damaged by
| the journalist -- only by the ignorance of the politicians
| now running our military.
|
| The information was newsworthy and in the public interest.
|
| Publication did not cause harm (and you might argue that
| dropping actual bombs caused much more harm).
|
| The information was obtained legally and without foresight.
|
| The journalist has an obligation to report the information if
| it serves the public interest, especially if it reveals
| systemic failures, endangers democracy, or impacts public
| policy.
| codethief wrote:
| I think you are talking past each other. OP's point was
| about future publications (possibly including confidential
| information only shared through that Signal group).
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Sounds like he received the message purposefully and pretends
| it was an mistake?
|
| 2h is a lot but also not that much time, everything is prepared
| already it's more a countdown I would say. What would be a
| usual timeframe to inform the people you want to inform about
| an immediate event which is going to happen?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Sounds like he received the message purposefully and
| pretends it was an mistake?
|
| Why would he have been added to the group? For what purpose
| would the current National Security Advisor have to bring in
| an outsider to discussions that ended up involving almost
| certainly classified data?
|
| > 2h is a lot but not that much time
|
| He was added to the group two days (13 March) before the
| strikes (15 March), not two hours.
| iszomer wrote:
| My guess is as a honeypot: see who would publish this
| alleged "leak" and give the administration justification to
| "open an investigation" on them.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That would make a _lot_ more sense if the information
| hadn 't been accurate. You don't leak real operational
| data deliberately to try and catch someone who might
| publish it. Because if they do, you've compromised your
| real mission (the attacks on the Houthis in this case).
| iszomer wrote:
| I meant it from the common assumption for mass media
| propagation: get it out there as fast as possible and
| correct later if needed. On a related note, how often do
| consumers of news go back to read on retractions, if any?
| herzigma wrote:
| Jeff Goldberg loves his country more than he cares about a
| "source."
| weebull wrote:
| He might serves his country better by waiting for them to
| incriminate themselves more.
| freejazz wrote:
| By what, sending another message to him?
| malshe wrote:
| One lawyer I follow on Bluesky mentioned the longer he stayed
| on more exposed he became to legal ramifications. Also, this
| involves national security which courts may treat differently
| than other issues.
|
| I am more surprised that he did not save this incident for a
| future book
| cocacola1 wrote:
| Might boost their subs. This legit got me to resubscribe to
| the Atlantic.
| malshe wrote:
| I think that's a fair assessment. Goldberg seems to have
| strong journalistic ethics too. Again, from Bluesky,
|
| _David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible
| retaliation_
|
| _Jeffrey: It 's not my role to care about the possibility
| of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and
| do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in
| our society today---we see this across corporate journalism
| and law firms and other industries--there's too much
| preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go
| do our jobs._
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _there 's too much preemptive obeying for my taste._
|
| From historian Timothy Snyder's book _On Tyranny_ ,
| chapter/lesson number one:
|
| > _Do not obey in advance._
|
| * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051/on-
| tyranny-by...
|
| * https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny/
| itbeho wrote:
| He did the right thing. He's obviously of a certain political
| bent, but recognized this kind of leak could lead to the loss
| of American service member lives. He didn't share everything
| from the chat. I respect him for what he did.
|
| And I agree with your assessment. Morons...
| ty6853 wrote:
| Hard to say. Sharing it may have lead to saving of servicemen
| lives since it may cause an abort. Not like it is a self
| defense mission, attacks on Houthi is totally optional
| meddling that likely breeds more 'terrorists'.
| 9dev wrote:
| Trying to assess the consequences of publishing highly
| classified information on military operations is a
| ridiculously reckless idea. None of us have enough data
| about the full picture to even try to guess correctly here.
| The only sane thing to do is to maintain confidentiality
| and leave it to the involved agencies to draw consequences
| as they see fit.
| ty6853 wrote:
| A group of idiots who share battle plans with journalists
| under commander in chief Trump have clearly displayed
| their incompetence in drawing consequences. That the
| idiots who illegally sent it know best was not even on my
| radar of possibilities and is a ridiculously reckless
| idea imo.
|
| It is not even clear to me that preserving serviceman is
| one of the goals of these agencies, given they've marched
| them off to die in several needless wars. Sure maybe the
| agencies might have more information, that doesn't mean
| they're more likely to make decisions that preserve life.
| Deference to 'experts' in government has lead to much
| bloodshed.
| 9dev wrote:
| Ah, I didn't phrase this properly; I was referring to the
| broader military organisation orchestrating the actual
| long-Running operations, not the clowns in charge. They
| probably know best which information should be classified
| to protect deployed soldiers, and I would find it
| questionable to assume you know better than them about
| what may endanger individual servicemen abroad.
| educasean wrote:
| Imagine if he stays and obtains some critical information that
| later happens to get leaked. You're now a prime suspect for the
| leak, possibly facing charges of something like treason. I
| think leaving was the wise choice.
| lapcat wrote:
| > If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned
| this source.
|
| > If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as
| long as he could.
|
| > Or, he's got other channels that work better.
|
| The Signal chat group was called the "Houthi PC small group."
| It appeared to be a short-term, mission-specific group rather
| than a long-term, open-ended group. Thus, it's unlikely that
| much more information would be gained in the future. Goldberg's
| inclusion in the chat _was_ the main story here, not the
| specific details revealed to Goldberg, many of which he kept
| confidential.
| mercurywells wrote:
| They've been bombing the Houthis for quite a few days now
| protocolture wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Very similar to this case in Australia.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/02/abc-agrees-to-...
|
| The ABC had a public interest duty to publicise everything,
| instead they left 99% unread and returned the contents to the
| government.
|
| Pathetic.
| fatbird wrote:
| I'm betting that Goldberg realized, once it was confirmed real,
| that his only feasible defense was exiting the chat and going
| public immediately. Otherwise, someone notices he's there, and
| he's arrested by ICE and disappeared to El Salvador, or worse.
|
| In many ways, being a public enemy of the Trump Admin is the
| safest enemy to be.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| The Atlantic is not a typical publication. It is run by serious
| people.
| seatac76 wrote:
| He could have continued for weeks, imho he did the good citizen
| and responsible journalist thing here. Made the public aware
| before it really got out of hand.
| jzb wrote:
| "If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as
| long as he could."
|
| The real story is that he was added to the channel, so it
| doesn't surprise me that he didn't try to lurk indefinitely.
| I'm guessing these things are also ad-hoc, so perhaps the well
| was already dry after the attack?
|
| But this is some truly amateur-hour shit. I've seen better
| communications discipline from volunteer open source projects
| than this.
| matwood wrote:
| > I've seen better communications discipline from volunteer
| open source projects than this.
|
| Because those people are likely competent. The problem with
| hiring mostly yes-men/women is competence is secondary.
| Zak wrote:
| I thought that at first, but the group was clearly temporary,
| intended for this particular military action. There was likely
| little value to staying, and as other comments note, a nonzero
| risk of (likely unsuccessful) prosecution.
| voodooEntity wrote:
| I mean im not shocked by neither the fact this happend nor the
| content. it portraits the staff exactly as i would imagine them.
|
| Tho i still find it kinda amusing that this is the finally proofs
| that the average security invested joe has a better opsec than
| the highest ranking us gov officials.
| asdff wrote:
| 304 votes, 75 comments 3 hours after posting and this is already
| being thrown all the way back to 134 rank on the front page with
| some 2-3 day old posts. This is very clearly hacker news: a case
| of opsec slipup in easily the worst fashion coming straight from
| the SecDef (or one representing the SecDef). A shame it is
| probably getting flamed and downvoted over partisan reasons,
| although I know there are many conservatives here who probably
| don't enjoy these constant leopards eating face moments they've
| unleashed and am not surprised they'd be acting out and flagging
| embarrassing posts.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >A shame it is probably getting flamed and downvoted over
| partisan reasons
|
| Is this the forum for this type of news?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html...
| On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic:
| Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or
| celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new
| phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal
| pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
| topic.
| lcc wrote:
| Like the parent said, a tech-related opsec failure at this
| level is absolutely something a 'good hacker' would find
| interesting.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >tech-related opsec failure
|
| Not sure that 'fat fingering' on a mobile device rises to
| the level of tech-related opsec. The choice to use a non-
| government approved device certainly is news, but not
| necessarily Hacker News. Plenty of better places to debate
| it.
| cmilton wrote:
| >Plenty of better places to debate it.
|
| I often see this comment, but there are never any sources
| provided. Any links to share?
| lemon_zest wrote:
| There was a post about George Foreman in the front page the
| other day so why not this one?
| sethammons wrote:
| this site has some governors in place to prevent a flood of low
| quality engagement. If things rise too fast, they get pushed
| down a little and cool off and rise back up. No great
| conspiracy as I found this thread at the top of HN a day later.
| bcye wrote:
| Is there a place where all these rules are written? There's
| so much supposed meta-HN knowledge in the discussions
| jml7c5 wrote:
| People often flag politics-related posts because the comments
| are invariably of low quality. The interesting discussion is
| generally about technical issues, but that is usually
| overwhelmed by political opinions. This happens on both sides
| of the spectrum.
|
| There are lots of other places to discuss politics.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Is that a SCIF in your pocket or are you just displeased to see
| me
| iteratethis wrote:
| This is bad news for entire genres of books, TV shows and movies
| that are based on the supreme competence, sophistication and
| wealth of the Pentagon, NSA and CIA.
|
| Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates
| setting up a bar date.
|
| It's a disturbing leak in itself but i take issue with the
| journalist obsessing over the tool of choice whilst ignoring the
| actual strategizing.
|
| The casual way in which a mass murder is planned. The emphasis on
| "messaging" and how to spin this on Biden and Europe. The
| teenage-like emojis to celebrate acts of war.
|
| This administration looks bad from the outside but through this
| leak we can see that their shocking press moments are still the
| polished and spun versions of a reality that is far more sick.
| outer_web wrote:
| Film and tv are safe, this was done by political appointees.
| The civil servants (you know, the "deep state") are much better
| about it because it's their job.
| 9dev wrote:
| The most excellent steak can be ruined by an amateur chef
| easily.
|
| I agree with your point on the spin, although I wonder if the
| Signal angle is the only thing even republicans can agree with
| to be kinda bad, given that even the most egregious reports on
| the current administration don't really cause as much as a
| raised brow there. So to make it a story that doesn't just
| resonate in the liberal echo chamber, include something
| despicable to both camps.
| timewizard wrote:
| > on the supreme competence, sophistication and wealth of the
| Pentagon, NSA and CIA.
|
| Agencies with no oversight are seen as competent? That's news
| to me. There's a definite waste of taxpayer dollars on
| propaganda to try to make this point publicly but I didn't
| think anyone was poorly educated enough to actually believe it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates
| setting up a bar date.
|
| Typically these positions are filled by highly qualified people
| with decades of experience.
|
| This administration is not typical. They deliberately chose
| inexperienced people who would be loyal above all else.
|
| Selecting for incompetence was part of the plan, and it's been
| obvious from the start.
|
| Hegseth was a Fox News host, not someone qualified for this
| position.
|
| This story is stranger than fiction.
| telez wrote:
| seems like a UI design failure
| rchaud wrote:
| "Don't make me think" was certainly the guiding principle at
| play here.
| timeon wrote:
| UI could be considered failure if we were talking about casual
| gossip. Particular UI shouldn't be the issue because the App
| was not supposed to be used for this. These should be
| professionals. Issue was between keyboard and chair.
| belter wrote:
| https://archive.ph/xpZHl
| atonse wrote:
| Setting aside the obvious shock of the actual subject, I'm going
| to try the herculean task of bringing this back to being a HN-
| related topic...
|
| My guess is that there is someone named Jeffrey Goldberg in the
| NatSec team (or high up, it seems like a common combination of
| first and last name at least), and likely that they meant to add
| him, rather than the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the Atlantic of all
| people. Could this be a UI/UX thing with Signal? (not
| differentiating between two Jeffrey Goldbergs on your contact
| list?).
| rnjesus wrote:
| i think this is likely what happened, though i also find it
| just as plausible that he was fat-fingered or drunk-added into
| the group (i've been added to group chats accidentally by both
| these "methods")
| jredwards wrote:
| There is someone with the same initials, not with the same
| name. I saw someone else point out a potential candidate here
| but I don't recall the exact name.
| nkurz wrote:
| I've seen Jamieson Greer as US Trade Representative (same
| initials) and Jeffrey Kruse of the Defense Intelligence
| Agency (same first name) mentioned as possibly being the
| intended invitee.
| roughly wrote:
| I mean, I expect the actual approved governmental secure
| messaging apps would make it much harder to accidentally add a
| journalist to the thread, so I don't know if this is a Signal
| problem per se.
| runamok wrote:
| 100%. Let's not blame Signal where it's on you to only invite
| the proper potentially anonymous contact you want to
| communicate with. Very different goals.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Signal could fundraise on new flair for DOGE implants,
| cabinet members, and folks who have side-loaded FSB certs.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This also highlights why the conversation being held on
| Signal is so bad. Imagine if "J G" expressed concerns about
| going forward with the attack. Making actual decisionmaking
| on go or no go over a non-classified system is insanely
| stupid.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Can users in a group add/invite others in? My firth though was
| someone doing it on the sly, to leak deliberately.
| fzzzy wrote:
| This is what I started thinking last night. Any of the people
| who were added to the chat could be disgruntled and add a
| reporter to the chat to leak it. Is there even any log of who
| added who to a chat? There might not even be any way to pin
| it on the leaker. If the leaker had been involved in several
| such chats and knew the intent was to intentionally violate
| federal recordkeeping laws, not only would this accomplish
| the leak, but there might not even be any record of who
| caused the leak.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Goldberg is not a fan of Trump
|
| I did not believe there was any way this was done
| accidentally...
| petre wrote:
| Hanlon's razor begs to differ.
|
| Trump sent his golf buddy Waltz to _negotiate_ with Putin
| and he came back brainwashed with Russian propaganda.
| Russian psyops is either really good or some of these
| people in the administration are just morons.
| crtasm wrote:
| By default, yes. You can change the permissions so only group
| admins can add people.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If they have admin privileges. The person who creates a group
| has them by default, and can grant them to anyone else,
| admins can add, remove, and grant or revoke admin privileges
| and set group name/description parameters, and disappearing
| message configuration. Yes, you could have a group where the
| founder revokes admin privileges for themselves and then
| nobody can make changes to the group (although individual
| members can leave and delete the history on their own
| devices). Signal users can also delete their own messages.
| jajko wrote:
| > Setting aside the obvious shock of the actual subject, I'm
| going to try the herculean task of bringing this back to being
| a HN-related topic...
|
| Is that so shocking? I watch often some forums on reddit
| related to combat footage, not frequently but enough to see
| various patterns. Before houthis started attacking shipping
| lanes, there were tons of videos of them kicking ass of Saudi
| military but way more often some subsaharan African mercenaries
| in their uniforms. Like, really badly kicking ass, smart
| ambushes, devastating results even on heavy machinery. The
| opposite side had almost nothing.
|
| Then with change of this, the tone and content turned 180
| degrees. Almost always absolutely precise laser guided bomb
| strikes even if for 1-2 guys seemingly in the middle of
| nowhere, and a lot of them popping up all the time (to the tune
| of few every single day). Always titled cca 'Saudi air force
| doing XYZ'. Like sure, if you are clueless and don't know state
| of their army, their discipline, level of training and so on
| you can believe that.
|
| I didn't believe this since the switch was sharp, US is simply
| flying there for quite some time, together with Saudi air
| force. TBH I don't care, just sharing observations. No way we
| can know hard facts obviously, but its easy to connect those
| very few dots. A bit of failure from opsec point of view - if
| you do this stuff, at least keep it secret and not broadcasting
| to whole world so politicians can keep big smiles and grand
| statements, at least for clueless civilians who barely know
| where Yemen lies on the map.
|
| What others write it matches my observation - "Houthi PC small
| group", seemingly short term group about specific attack. US
| attacks themselves are already happening for a year and
| something.
| nopelynopington wrote:
| I think the poster was talking about the shock of the lapse
| in security, not the shock of houthi air strikes
| bsimpson wrote:
| This sounds less like a Signal problem than an information
| organization problem. Signal can only show what's in its
| datastore (your contact list).
|
| I just checked on Android - if you try to add someone to a
| group chat, it shows their name and profile pic.
|
| One potential Signal-side wrinkle is that it allows you to add
| people to a group chat who are in another chat you're in, but
| who aren't in your contacts list. There are strangers I was
| apparently at a dinner party with years ago who are eligible to
| be added to a group chat. If Jeffrey Goldberg has his Signal
| profile name set to JG and he wasn't in Mike Waltz's phone with
| a more specific name, that could lead to this mistake.
| petre wrote:
| Then it's a good thing there's not an Abdul-Malik al-Houthi
| in the administration, as they might have included the wrong
| person on the private group chat.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Entirely possible. Which is why Government services for 'chat'
| explicitly don't allow contacts to appear who aren't already in
| the government. You've also no doubt seen email as it appears
| in Government inboxes with the big red banner "Came from
| outside, don't trust this" kinds of things will all the links
| disabled.
|
| Two things that are really troublesome. The first, as Josh
| Marshall of TPM points out, "No one on that chat asked 'Why are
| we doing this on Signal?'" which suggests that it isn't the
| first time Signal was used for 'off books' stuff and that
| perhaps there are many such conversations. The second is that
| the conversation was set up while one of the participants was
| in the Kremlin waiting to talk to Putin. So either 'Kremlin
| Free WiFi' or the local cell tower providing connectivity?
|
| Most pundits feel like this administration is trying to keep
| things out of FOIA and discoverability reach which has its own
| problems.
|
| So yes, tools for Government communications don't have this
| problem, hell even Microsoft Teams on their US cloud get better
| protection than this.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Most pundits feel like this administration is trying to
| keep things out of FOIA and discoverability reach which has
| its own problems.
|
| I don't think we need to ponder so hard about this.
|
| This administration is headed by a man who kept stolen TS/SCI
| national secrets in a bathroom at his house.
|
| A fish rots from the head.
| rahkiin wrote:
| Keeps*. He took them back some weeks ago
| lbarron6868 wrote:
| I believe they meant to contact Jamieson Greer (JG), and maybe
| Waltz had both of them listed by initials? That's the leading
| theory.
| Alupis wrote:
| I don't use Signal, and am unfamiliar with the UI/UX.
|
| However, it seems more plausible to me that Jeffrey Goldberg is
| in someone's contact list from previous on-purpose leaks (to
| control narrative, etc, typical "anonymous sources say" stuff)
| - and was accidentally added to this group.
| Zak wrote:
| When adding people to a chat, it shows the contact list from
| the device, with avatars. It is also possible to manually
| enter a phone number or username.
|
| It's very likely that senior government officials have a
| phone with journalists saved in the contacts. It's easy to
| imagine why there are rules against using the same phone for
| secret war stuff, yet here we are.
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| It could happen on Whatsapp. I've seen a lot of groups where
| everybody is an admin.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| I'm putting my money on somebody fat-fingering the wrong
| contact. Maybe it's just me but I swear every phone I've ever
| owned has had extremely unreliable UIs, stemming from a
| combination of phantom touches being detected, and the phone
| moving buttons around _as I 'm trying to interact with it_, as
| if it's on dialup line struggling to load somebody's Sonic the
| Hedgehog fanpage on GeoCities one gif at a time in 1996. And
| it's just phones too, this never happens on my PCs.
|
| Of course, none of this excuses the failure to verify the
| identities of everybody in their chat, the choice to use a
| (probably) unvetted app on a (probably) unvetted personal
| device, or any other of a number of basic opsec rules that
| should be obvious to anybody who is vested with the authority
| to order an airstrike on the other side of the planet.
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Sounds almost too good to be true.
| maest wrote:
| [flagged]
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Could've been a setup to get The Atlantic to leak government
| secrets...
| ttyprintk wrote:
| But the backfire is catastrophic: every leaker in DoD can now
| claim as a defense that their leak must be a political
| appointee up there attaching docs to now-expunged Signal chats.
| That is now both Occam and Bayes rational.
| outer_web wrote:
| I don't think you deserve the downvotes considering that would
| be very in character for this administration. That said, it
| does not seem plausible considering the number of officials
| they'd have to incriminate to burn Goldberg, not to mention the
| airing of so much dirty laundry. Seems like a better plan would
| be to go to him directly with a phony leaker.
| itbeho wrote:
| Colossal fuckup on many levels. Heads should roll. This kind of
| thing puts people in our military service at undue risk.
| mherkender wrote:
| Nothing will happen. If something does happen, it will be an
| attack on the author of the article.
| nunez wrote:
| A normal govvie sending cleared materials to unapproved
| recipients over unapproved channels? 20 years in federal prison.
|
| A govvie with status doing the same? A slap on the wrist.
|
| Embarrassing.
| WorldWideWebb wrote:
| A Trump cabinet member doing the same? Not even a slap on the
| wrist.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Yeah, the next time I have to submit a SAAR form for military
| network access, and they request my Information Awareness
| Annual Training certification as an attachment, it's going to
| be hard to not laugh in their face. We were getting scolded
| about "not even searching the 'Net for the content of the
| Teixeira leaks because possessing classified info could be
| prosecuted" and these guys are discussing upcoming strike
| packages in their Signal chat? Un-fucking-real.
| enceladus06 wrote:
| Basically confirming what we knew all along that it is security
| theater. IMO we should keep the nukes & drone force to secure
| the borders and make sure that these are competent to maintain
| security.
|
| But the rest of the military/DOD/ABCD/USAID is legacy bloat
| left over from the cold war and should be cut. Then we can
| finally get rid of the income tax for most if not all of the
| country.
|
| Edit: I say this as an independent who does not support either
| "side".
| n1b0m wrote:
| In 2023, Hegseth had his own critique of the Biden administration
| handling classified documents "flippantly", remarking on Fox News
| that "If at the very top there's no accountability", then we have
| "two tiers of justice".
|
| https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1904228588414464167
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-t...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| More:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/03/jeff...
| ipython wrote:
| https://archive.ph/u1H02
| e44858 wrote:
| How can we know this group chat was really comprised of
| government officials and not some bored teenagers? Signal allows
| you to set your profile name to anything you like.
| jfim wrote:
| Have you read the article? The author mentions this exact
| concern.
| n2d4 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security
| Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of
| the Signal group. "This appears to be an authentic message
| chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added
| to the chain,"
| e44858 wrote:
| Is there an official statement of this on a government
| website?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| They used signal and included a journo...a web-page
| highlighting an 'error', may take a while to appear.
| Especially as some poor mf has to make a page that doesn't
| criticize la presidentino.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Watch the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing from earlier
| today. You can hear one of the participants in that chat
| acknowledge that he's in it and it's real in response to the
| questions of committee members.
|
| This is not in question, at all.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| The natural and insider language of the chat, and
| (especially) the perfect timing of the strikes with the
| planning in the tread, also make it extremely unlikely this
| was anything but a genuine conversation, even without
| confirmation. The alternative is a combination of a very-
| prepared fraudster with either their own source of privileged
| information (to get the timing right) or else an incredible
| coincidence such that their entirely fake and uninformed
| planning matched the timing set out in the real planning.
| That it was genuine is far, far more likely than either of
| those (one of which raises its own, different security
| concerns, anyway)
| Frederation wrote:
| False Flag, perchance?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| What? What are you saying was a false flag?
| evanjrowley wrote:
| Who is surprised the US is planning on military action in Yemen?
| ttyprintk wrote:
| The journalist declined to give any details after "UPDATE", so
| that the story is not about Suez shipping but about opsec.
| heartbreak wrote:
| [flagged]
| fzeroracer wrote:
| They have a tendency to simply just ignore things that
| challenge or are not aligned with their worldview so I expect
| you'll be waiting for quite some time unfortunately.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here, regardless of how wrong someone is
| or you think they are.
| codedokode wrote:
| Mr. Trump's return into White House made news about America
| interesting again.
| codedokode wrote:
| I wonder whether the phones and software used were certified for
| discussing such sensitive issues and if there are risks of
| leaking the data because of this.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Before the phrase "good with the Cyber" I believed opsec was
| teachable.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| This Yemen situation is quite interesting. In 1948 nobody could
| have conceived a situation in which white people wouldn't be
| running the world, Dutch people were still religious and public
| opinion was pro Israel. Hopefully when the last boomers die we
| can finally extricate ourselves from this self imposed fuck up.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Did only boomers vote?
| financetechbro wrote:
| This story lacks substance and is a perfect of example of medias
| complacency to the state in the name of "national security"...
| total BS. Ken Klippenstein has a great take on this reporting.
|
| https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/trump-admin-...
| nanna wrote:
| Relatively minor side point, but still: for people who chastise
| "European freeloading", it's interesting to note that none of
| Signal group's members' usernames have the badge Signal gives
| users who pay for the service. Users like me, from Europe. Sure,
| they might all be paying but have opted out, but let's be honest
| that's unlikely.
| frenchman_in_ny wrote:
| In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums,
| or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of
| messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-
| hit-...
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| In the government world, people have been jailed for it. Not
| people so directly connected to a president, though.
| billy99k wrote:
| Heh. Like when they arrested someone for running their own
| mail server and sending classified information through it? Oh
| wait...
| jjeaff wrote:
| yes, after months and months of investigations and hearing
| and non-stop new coverage and a Republican led committee
| that admitted in their final report that while there was
| negligence, they couldn't find any wrong doing.
| jillyboel wrote:
| Rules for thee but not for me. Now get back to work, peasant.
| swiftymon wrote:
| it's not unauthorized use of signal;
|
| "Government officials have used Signal for organizational
| correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in
| the Biden administration, people who had permission to download
| it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use
| the app sparingly, according to a former national security
| official who served in the administration."
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about...
| jedberg wrote:
| It absolutely is an unauthorized use. Authorize use is "let's
| go to lunch". This was "let's bomb these people at this
| time".
|
| Big difference.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Buttery Males!
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| It's too bad that this is being downvoted - swiftymon is
| trying to provide some context. It's useful to the discussion
| and well sourced. I'd love to read counterarguments rather
| than have this fade away :)
| andelink wrote:
| TFA article discusses how officials have long used Signal
| for routine logistics, contrasting that with the national
| defense plans being discussed in a group chat with a
| journalist
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Because their claim is false and unsupported by their
| quote. It is absolutely unauthorized for government
| employees to conduct discussions like this on services like
| Signal. It's not even allowed for CUI level discussions,
| and war planning pushes into Secret and TS territory very
| quickly.
|
| Organizational discussions means things like, for a
| standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at
| 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800."
| Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which
| is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| This is the sort of counterargument I'd have liked to see
| instead of disagreement-driven downvoting, yes.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| swiftymon created an account just to post a lie. That
| comment absolutely should be downvoted, with or without
| rebuttals. This isn't about disagreement.
|
| You disagree over opinions. Should Signal be an
| appropriate system for discussing classified data? I'd
| say no, you might say yes, we disagree and debate.
|
| Legally, is Signal an appropriate system for discussing
| classified data? No. Unless you believe in alternative
| facts, there is no point to disagree on, it's just a fact
| that it is not legally an appropriate system for what
| they did.
|
| And then swiftymon lied and used "evidence" to bolster
| their lie that didn't even agree with their lie.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| You assert things strongly, but you are not an arbiter of
| truth about data classification in the federal government
| - this is certainly an area where discussion can be had
| and where becoming more informed increases the quality of
| discussion. Interestingly enough, many of the people in
| charge of data classification in the federal government
| were on said Signal thread!
|
| I could assert that you're lying, etc - as you're
| effectively committing the same sin as the poster who
| originally got downvoted - but that wouldn't be having a
| conversation; it'd be a rude refusal to tolerate a
| conversation. I encourage you to assume good intent and
| engage instead of hurling accusations at people - even if
| they're new accounts.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Let's assume for the moment that the discussion of military
| plans on Signal was covered by this policy. That's debatable
| as others have said. Other parts of that policy would seem to
| suggest this kind of conversation is expressly forbidden on
| Signal and similar unofficial chat apps, while other less
| sensitive conversations are permitted.
|
| How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation
| that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?
|
| Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a _massive_ fuck
| up.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Did you read the article? Signal is not approved for this
| kind of communication and has long been advised against. They
| also had messages set to autodelete which violates the
| records act. It's blatantly illegal
| PokestarFan wrote:
| Who's going to arrest them?
| basisword wrote:
| This is why you have a constitution, codified laws, judicial
| system, separation of powers, etc. We're just learning now
| none of these things are worth the paper they're written on.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| It's just as useful and effective as the international law
| and order that was setup after WW2.
|
| So nada.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| As long as you build an order around independence of
| countries and diplomacy (instead of, say, force) any
| organisation will only be as useful as countries are
| willing to follow and any structure can only be as good
| as the ones in charge are willing to go.
|
| In consequences there are many flaws and a lot is stuck
| in post WW2 thinking, but I doubt there is a realistic
| chance of anything overall better.
|
| The current U.S. administration tries to reshape things
| by disruption, we will see how this goes, but I doubt
| this will earn trust and buy-in from others. Thus not
| lead to a stable and "better" system. (While better, of
| course, is not globally objective, which again is key to
| the problem)
| bamboozled wrote:
| Would you say that was always the case, or just a more
| recent development?
| groby_b wrote:
| Our entire civilization has always rested on a tacit
| "it's nice to have civilization, so we play by the rules"
| by everybody involved. Voluntary restraint is what keeps
| us from being animals, not nature or laws.
|
| As Hobbes wrote so eloquently, we keep that compact
| because the alternative is "continual fear, and danger of
| violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor,
| nasty, brutish, and short"
|
| We're currently exploring how many of those rules are
| really necessary, and, as a society, have decided to
| mostly shrug off that exploration.
|
| _That_ is the part that 's changed. A willingness to
| ignore the rules by some, and a collective shrug by most.
| fergbrain wrote:
| The issue is that there's nothing that _requires_
| prosecution, just allows it.
|
| This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial
| discretion.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Well, in the idea of the system there is: The system is
| built around the assumption that Congress would impeach a
| president who fails to to the right(tm) thing (or fails
| to make his administration do ...)
|
| However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight
| over executive there isn't much left keeping the system
| in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure
| unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?
|
| The system is built around the assumption that a notable
| part of the system wants to keep it alive.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Fun fact, initially when places were setting up police
| forces, people railed that it was an infringement on their
| right to do a Citizen's Arrest.
| perdomon wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250324194236/https://www.theat...
| dvh wrote:
| When they say VP do they mean Vice President or Vladimir Putin?
| jdcasale wrote:
| Without commenting on the (important) political or reputational
| considerations here, I want to talk a bit about the operational
| risk presented by this practice. There is a somewhat sizable "So
| what? Signal is e2e encrypted. Nothing bad happened and you're
| all overreacting." narrative floating around. (not so much in
| this thread, but in the general discourse)
|
| If this operation was planned in Signal, then so were countless
| others (and presumably so would countless others be in the
| future).
|
| If not for this journalist, this would likely have continued
| indefinitely. We have high confidence that at least some of the
| officials were doing this on their personal phones. (Gabbard
| refused to deny this in the congressional hearing -- it does not
| stand to reason that she'd do that unless she was, in fact using
| her personal phone).
|
| At some point in the administration, it's likely that at least
| one of their personal phones will be compromised (Pegasus, etc).
| E2E encryption isn't much use if the phone itself is compromised.
| This is why we have SCIFs.
|
| There was no operational fallout of this particular screwup, but
| if this practice were to continue, it's likely certain that an
| adversary would, at some point, compromise these communications.
| Not through being accidentally invited to the chat rooms, but
| through compromise of the participants' hardware. An APT could
| have advance notice of all manner of confidential and natsec-
| critical plans.
|
| In all likelihood this would lead to failed operations and
| casualties. The criticism/pushback on this is absolutely
| justified.
| lokar wrote:
| It seems one of the people (and thus the phone) was actually in
| Moscow during the chat!
| wood_spirit wrote:
| That counts as a friendly country these days =(
| dgacmu wrote:
| Or not even the device: The other reason we have SCIFs is they
| provide a secure location. These personal devices could have
| been in use anywhere, including places where they were subject
| to observation. Including but not limited to Moscow. :)
| jdcasale wrote:
| Another excellent point.
| rurp wrote:
| I agree with all of this, my only quibble is that I would bet
| there have already been costs associated with this idiocy.
| Hostile powers knew going in that this would be an
| incompetently run administration and I'm sure were looking at
| gaining access to personal devices out of the gate. It's
| possible that a great many highly sensitive conversations have
| already been read by adversaries. I also expect that similar
| sloppiness like adding the wrong person to a Signal chat has
| already happened without being reported on.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yes, this was one of the main points on infosec Mastodon
| today. While everyone is aware enough to be concerned with
| encryption over the wire, it's the endpoints that matter.
| Personal Android devices capable of running Signal are going
| to be some of the easiest to compromise for a sufficiently
| motivated attacker. I've seen n00b cops do it for drug gangs
| here. There's no question that Russia, China, et al. can do
| it just as well and we have as good as much as confirmation
| that that's what's going on in at least Tulsi Gabbard's case.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Exactly. Signal on Android uses your phone PIN, for some
| insane reason.
| anthomtb wrote:
| This hypocrisy reminds me of one of my former lead developers. He
| required everyone on the team to go through multi-person code
| reviews and pass an extensive CI suite before merging changes
| into our mainline.
|
| But him? Half that time he'd approve his own changes without
| review, the other half he would force-push and bypass the CI
| system entirely.
|
| He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to
| avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules and
| policies that you do not follow yourself?
| manquer wrote:
| As one such developer, it is a powerful ability to be able to
| bypass restrictions meant to be used sparingly for a good
| reason
|
| I rarely commit the same kind of code the full time
| professional developer do(when bypassing policies).
|
| Typically it is stuff like urgent patch in prod that may not
| have coverage , or partial long running refactor which breaks
| existing tests but better to be able merge quickly than keep
| the branch constantly free of merge conflicts , or experimental
| exploratory new type of code(new lang , stack whatever )for
| which we have to yet evolve processes, part of what the lead is
| supposed to be exploring and so on.
|
| Although In my experience junior leads more often than not
| abuse their privileges than use it well.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow
| yourself?
|
| If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up
| this way? Rules for thee, not for me. You can't try to view
| power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality.
| The _point_ is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and
| to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking
| them. You do this with media capture and twisted narratives,
| taking advantage of the erosion of rule of law as a respected
| concept among the public.
| conductr wrote:
| I think it's more likely a trust issue. He didn't trust the
| other devs to push things directly, but ofc he trusts
| himself. I do this with somethings myself. But I also do the
| inverse, where I don't want to trust myself so I setup a
| bunch of checks and tests to save my future self from my
| present self
|
| I think when you're the 'architect' or know the full stack
| very well, to where you fully repl/grok it and occasionally
| need to do hot patch type work, the former approach is nice.
| But, my brain has limited memory and time erodes quickly, so
| I also know when to rely on the latter approach and I try to
| do it as much as possible
| authorfly wrote:
| That's a real difference when something is your final
| responsibility too (as team lead or an architect). You
| think of it differently, you predict and anticipate changes
| better. It's like taking care of your kid vs your kids
| friend.
| t-writescode wrote:
| That's the definition of authoritarianism.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up
| this way?
|
| Ethics and morality.
|
| > You can't try to view power plays like this through the
| lenses of ethics or morality.
|
| Yes, you can, that's the entire point of ethics and morality.
|
| > The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies
| and to make sure that only your friends can get away with
| breaking them.
|
| Well, yes, that's the point of the specific actions being
| discussed; that doesn't make it impossible to look at them
| through a lens of ethics and morality, it just makes them
| look bad through such a lens.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Perhaps rather than "can't try to view" it's more accurate
| to say that it's an ineffective lense to try to understand
| the motivations and dynamics at play. You can, and should,
| analyse the ethics of just about everything in order to
| make value judgements. Those judgements just have very
| little to do with people's motivations, and to assume a
| principled moral stance on the part of an observed actor
| will leave you baffled more often than enlightened.
| useless_foghorn wrote:
| Power is less appealing if you aren't seeking to abuse it.
| I agree that an ethics and morality lens is both useful and
| necessary, but I fear it doesn't illuminate the actions and
| motivations of the powerful. Perhaps in contrast or relief,
| but not directly.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| I'm not seeing the parallels.
|
| Trump went on about Hillary's mail and made it a big thing for
| political points, not because he was particularly caring or
| didn't have infamously bad opsec when he got in.
|
| You lead dev trusted himself more than the team. He was
| probably right.
| anthomtb wrote:
| The parallel is senior leaders ignoring secure communication
| rules that their rank-and-file must follow. Hillary's email
| server did not immediately spring to my mind.
|
| Edit: Its safe to say that this story involves multiple
| levels of hypocrisy by the current administration.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| You're correct that Trump's entire cabinet are hypocrites and
| they deserve to be raked over the coals for this and have
| their past statements thrown back in their faces. At this
| point there's no reason to believe Trump or anyone in his
| circle ever saw the email scandal as anything but a cudgel
| with which to rhetorically bash their opponents.
|
| But the problem with them being hypocrites in this regard is
| that it follows from them doing the same thing Hillary did,
| and in that case the "fair" way to punish them would be the
| same way she was punished, which is not at all. So I don't
| see any real accountability ever coming from this beyond
| maybe trump firing a couple of sacrificial lambs from his
| administration.
| boringg wrote:
| The example you give is about control - he wanted control over
| everyone else's inputs but trusted himself. Not a great look as
| a leader.
| theoryofx wrote:
| _He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing
| to avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules
| and policies that you do not follow yourself?_
|
| Because these rules and policies are for people that are judged
| to need them by the person with the authority and
| responsibility for making the decision.
|
| Policies like these always have a cost and (hopefully) a
| benefit. Presumably this lead dev judged that the cost vs
| benefit didn't make sense for themselves but did for others.
| It's entirely possible they were correct.
| tdeck wrote:
| One of the main purposes of code review is to ensure that
| your code is understandable to other people. Good lead
| developers understand this. Bad ones find a way to push
| through their changes without review or get them rubber
| stamped, in my experience. Then you end up with big parts of
| the codebase that only the lead dev can work in productively.
| bdangubic wrote:
| the whole team has to review every single line of code to
| make sure everyone understands it? or is there a threshold
| like "we good if 7 out of 79 understand it?" almost 3
| decades hacking and have never heard anyone saying that
| purpose of the code review (in the top 987 reasons teams
| may institute it) is to ensure your code is understandable
| by other people... wild :)
| tdeck wrote:
| This page is literally the second result when you Google
| "benefits of code review":
|
| https://www.browserstack.com/guide/code-review-benefits
|
| > Code Review enhances the maintainability of the Code.
| It ensures that multiple people are aware about the code
| logic and functioning, which makes it easy to maintain in
| case the original author of the code is unavailable.
|
| The fact that you've been "hacking" for three decades and
| never considered this isn't something to wear as a badge
| of honor. As for your absurd straw man about everyone on
| the team reviewing every line of code, I've never seen
| one organization that does that.
| bdangubic wrote:
| _are aware about the code logic and functioning_
|
| awareness does not imply understanding :)
| Buttons840 wrote:
| As long as _authority_ and _responsibility_ land on the same
| person, I see no problem with it.
|
| If, however, a junior develop is _responsible_ for making a
| change, but has no _authority_ to make the change, then there
| is a problem.
| altairprime wrote:
| Code reviews are often used as an excuse to disclaim
| responsibility when problems occur, and as a way to deny
| authority under the guise of mandatory review requests.
| They do also have many benefits for e.g. continuity of
| service, but those two drawbacks remain relevant today.
| bdangubic wrote:
| lord help all people that work in places where you need
| "authority" to make a change...
| duxup wrote:
| That's one of the reasons I always worry about high level
| employees who "still write code". It's just too much
| opportunity for them to make bad choices and many ICs are
| afraid to speak up to avoid it.
|
| Same goes for some "10x developers" who are fast because the
| rules don't apply to them. Meanwhile the rules slow everyone
| else down (yea big surprise he is faster). And everyone else
| has to clean up after these guys when they get sloppy.
| AWebOfBrown wrote:
| Another interpretation of this is that the lead developer
| adequately mitigated the risk of errors while also managing the
| risk of not shipping fast enough. It's very easy to criticise
| when you're not the one answering for both, especially the
| latter.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The behavior will continue until an _effective_ negative stimulus
| is introduced.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Amazing that with H.N.'s doctrinaire application of the exact
| original title rule, _this_ is the title that the mods chose to
| editorialize.
| thunkingdeep wrote:
| Remember: every comment on here is implicitly directed to dang,
| and every link is implicitly approved of by dang.
|
| This is really his website at this point. The rules are mainly
| just his tools for shaping the content of discussions and
| submissions to his liking.
|
| A decade ago it was different. I mean, he was still way
| overbearing and biased, but I don't think it really had the
| same power-steering effect on the shapes of discussions as it
| does today. Over time, this is where we've come to.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I happen to know first hand that the thread is not going
| quite to dang's liking at the moment. I'm hoping it improves,
| but people are having a hard time sticking to the technical
| and security aspects.
| jeffbee wrote:
| There are zero technical issues to discuss in this affair.
| thunkingdeep wrote:
| This thread that's somehow at 29/30 on front page that has
| almost as many comments as every other link on the front
| right now combined? That thread? Yeah I'm sure there's no
| dang-related manipulation or downranking at all.
| guerrilla wrote:
| The opposite. I had him frontpage it to give it a chance.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's a day old submission with a lot of flame war
| material going on. That it's still on the front page
| suggests it's being propped up.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| And these guys have been in power for only a few months, they're
| still finding out about their new tools. What will happen in the
| next 4 years? will they even leave power peacefully?
| nopelynopington wrote:
| Trump has already been president and already demonstrated to us
| that he will not leave power peacefully. He's openly discussing
| serving a third term. I think it's highly unlikely that the
| transfer of power will happen peacefully unless
|
| 1) he dies in office (of natural causes)
|
| Or
|
| 2) the republicans win in 2028 and a different republican
| president is sworn in.
| serpix wrote:
| There are more options than this.
| watwut wrote:
| Conservatives or Trump will not give power back peacefully.
| The most likely is that they will prevent fair elections,
| but they also may simply refuse to give out power. They are
| attacking justice now and placed loyalist in power
| agencies.
|
| They cant afford giving away power now. Just in the last
| three months, there were multiple very clear law breaking
| acts. Musk is giving government contracts to himself. They
| do not worry about these, because they do not intend to
| give out power.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| That's a good question, for a lot of them, and especially Musk.
|
| What's his endgame now ? If Trump is no longer in power, even
| if Musk doens't land directly in prison, I have a hard time
| imagining the new government collaborating in any way with him
| or his companies. And they sure behave like this is not an
| issue.
| ctrlp wrote:
| In my opinion there are at least two ways to interpret this:
|
| a) It's an unintentional opsec failure. Perhaps there was an
| address book collision with another intended user. Perhaps it was
| fat-fingered. This seems likely.
|
| b) It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly,
| by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes. This
| seems less likely as there are better ways to leak with less
| blowback risk.
|
| Regarding using Signal in the first place. Yes, this seems like
| bad opsec, but it's possible that the current admin working
| groups don't trust the official secure channels and assume they
| are compromised and they are being spied upon by their own or
| foreign agencies. That seems very likely, given the
| circumstances. In which case, it is still a possible opsec
| failure, but perhaps a less bad risk than trusting operational
| security to known adverse agencies. This is the more interesting
| case, imho, since the assumption on here is largely that these
| types of coordination should be happening on official government
| channels. But "government" is not necessarily a unified
| collective working towards the same goals. If you have a strong
| suspicion that agents within your own team are acting against
| your goals, then of course, you have to consider communicating on
| alternative channels. Whether that's to evade legal restrictions
| or transparency, like with the Clinton email servers, or to evade
| sabotage, I'm not judging the ethics, just considering the
| necessity of truly secure communication.
|
| Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the
| highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised.
| Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to
| fail opsec than backdoors.
| boringg wrote:
| Option (a) 100%.
|
| This is an abysmal mistake on the big stage for a bunch of new
| people on the job. That it is the intelligence community makes
| it feel so much worse.
| alistairSH wrote:
| "abysmal mistake" makes it sound like this wasn't a
| considered action and willful disregard for both op-sec and
| the law. There is zero chance these guys didn't know what
| they were doing...
|
| At minimum, Mike Waltz is retired special ops, Rubio has had
| high-level clearance for ages from his time in the Senate,
| same for Gabbard in the House. None of them responded "Hey,
| this is poor op-sec and illegal, perhaps take this to an
| approved messaging service?"
| boringg wrote:
| Im not defending anything here but i also know how
| unsophisticated executives are and these guys are for sure
| not technical savvy people. Normally handlers do all the
| orchestration. I mean it looks pretty clear they chose to
| work outside the standard operating channels.
| echoangle wrote:
| > It was an intentional leak
|
| I don't see how this would work. If you're the leaker, do you
| just add the journalist to the group yourself? How are you
| going to explain that? I think there are more anonymous ways to
| leak stuff than adding someone else to the group chat. Or does
| signal not show who added someone?
| chasil wrote:
| I have not read this article, but I saw the headline this
| morning.
|
| I am reading it now.
|
| https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/signal-app-owned-china-it-safe-
| use...
|
| Edit: nothing to see here.
|
| "So, is Signal App owned by China? The answer is no... Signal
| is run by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit based in San
| Francisco... Amidst this controversy, it's crucial to
| remember that Signal's roots are firmly planted on American
| soil, dispelling any notion of Chinese ownership."
| Zak wrote:
| I don't think using Signal is the biggest problem in terms of
| security, though it's against the rules to use something not
| explicitly approved.
|
| The bigger security problem is that it was being run on devices
| that evidently weren't limited to secure communication tasks
| (such devices wouldn't have a journalist in their contacts).
| That suggests at least some people were using personal phones,
| which seems like a terrible idea.
| rimeice wrote:
| With the level of disdain for Europe in the leak, it's hard not
| to think b.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| There are other ways to "fake leak" information than having
| to look like an incompetent idiot at the end. Plus, what they
| said on Europe is not breaking news, they say pretty much the
| same on open channels - even when they face directly
| Europeans (e.g. last Munich conference)
| GVIrish wrote:
| Using Signal in this case is wrong and foolish full stop, and
| the extremely likely reason they did so is so they could escape
| standard government record keeping compliance (NARA).
|
| To start with, classified information is ONLY supposed to
| viewed in a SCIF. Secondly, it should never be loaded onto
| private devices. The private phones of national security
| leadership would be prime targets for every hostile
| intelligence agency in the world. It matters little if the
| information was encrypted in transit if the host device is
| compromised.
|
| One would have to be a fool to not trust all of the classified
| tools and safeguards the US government uses only to then use a
| commercial app on commercial phones to communicate classified
| data in public while stateside and abroad. Just the fact that
| someone could accidentally add an unauthorized person to the
| chat is but one reason it was crazy for them to do this.
| kelipso wrote:
| The most likely reason is convenience, not escaping record
| keeping.
| matwood wrote:
| It can certainly be both. Just like they have already tried
| to shield DOGE from FOIA transparency requests.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Avoiding government record keeping is literally part of the
| Project 2025 plan.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Then why would you enable the disappearing messages
| functionality?
| ctrlp wrote:
| Sure, those are the reasons for, but would be interesting for
| you to address the salient point of not trusting those
| government systems. I'm sure you can make the
| counterargument.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| If the CIA and NSA (let alone Russian and Chinese
| intelligence) are illegally spying on you, your civilian
| phone is toast. You shouldn't be ordering DoorDash on the
| thing.
| GVIrish wrote:
| That doesn't really make sense. If they had strong reason
| to believe that the secure comms systems they were supposed
| to be using were compromised, using personal phones to
| communicate outside of SCIFs is very, very far from what
| any competent person who understands and is briefed on the
| threat environment would do. Note that none of the people
| involved are making that argument because it would make
| them look even more incompetent.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Not arguing it was the best choice. But, I'm curious, if
| you were in the position where you had strong reasons to
| believe the official secure channels available to you
| were compromised by your political opponents who were
| leaking information received via those channels to
| undermine your policy initiatives, and needed to act and
| coordinate nonetheless, what would you do?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Just being reasonable, eh? If you're a deranged, paranoid
| orange person, you mean? Why not throw some ketchup
| bottles against the wall and walk around singing the
| Oompa Loompa song?
| ctrlp wrote:
| Hard to take someone using your tone seriously, friend.
| If you're just here to rant and rave, you're wasting your
| time.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > But, I'm curious, if you were in the position where you
| had strong reasons to believe the official secure
| channels available to you were compromised by your
| political opponents who were leaking information received
| via those channels to undermine your policy initiatives,
| and needed to act and coordinate nonetheless, what would
| you do?
|
| Here's a pretty good order of operations when your policy
| breaks the law or is so odious as to feel the need to
| hide it from other duly elected representatives in
| government:
|
| 1. Stop breaking the fucking law.
| ctrlp wrote:
| "The law" is for you and me. It can resolve contract
| disputes and punish some crimes. This is politics. It's a
| different order, and a category error to conflate the
| two. The sooner one disabuses oneself of having no
| distinction between the political and the legal, the
| sooner the world starts to make sense. Law at this level
| is lawfare (law as political weapon), not the normal
| proceedings of justice. Justice at this level is the rule
| of the stronger. Accept it and move on to more
| interesting political analysis. Or be trapped in an
| inescapable despair about the violations of the "rule of
| law."
| chihuahua wrote:
| I would use a private service like Signal, and make sure
| to add a journalist that will leak information to
| undermine my policy initiatives - obviously! (because I'm
| a genius)
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Follow the SOP (and the law) and use a SCIF.
|
| What they did is illegal. Any rank and file that did the
| same would be in prison for a decade, no questions asked.
|
| In general, it seems like you're trying to "3d chess"
| incompetence into strategy, but try taking a step back
| and looking at it with clear eyes. This was a bad
| decision, plain and simple. Nobody is taking
| responsibility for it, and that makes it worse - these
| people are in charge of the largest intelligence and war
| machine on the planet. This is not okay.
| ctrlp wrote:
| I'm not doing anything of the sort. The kind of problem
| I'm flagging in is experienced every day by governments
| all over the world. Would anyone disagree? People on here
| who want to put their heads in the sand about it are just
| being political when there is a legitimate technical
| topic to discuss. The point is these aren't "rank and
| file" actors. They are at the top of political
| leadership. Those rules don't apply at this level of
| power politics so why get bogged down in such thinking?
| threeseed wrote:
| The administration has not made this argument though. You
| have.
|
| So why should we default to the position of not trusting
| those systems when every previous administration has used
| it without issus.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Many people are making the argument that this
| administration is unlike all previous administrations. I
| infer you disagree with that.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Do you! You are just asking questions for a robust and
| vigorous debate! Since we're just asking questions,
| should we deport all blacks back to Africa, or just some
| of them, in your opinion? Should women be allowed to
| vote? Show your work, MAGA friendo!
| ctrlp wrote:
| I'm sorry, are you some kind of troll? You should work on
| your delivery a bit. Get a grip.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Likely a sock puppet account taken over to spread
| inversion propaganda, where Trump denouncers get called
| MAGA just to screw with people's perceptions and beliefs.
| Gaslighting, essentially.
|
| Russian operated puppets have been spreading similar
| stuff everywhere they can. When MAGA ppl do something
| stupid, they're instantly there flat out calling them
| lefties and communists, etc. to shift blame, confuse
| readers and devolve meaningful discussions into name-
| calling and pointless debate.
| kelipso wrote:
| The argument is that there are many organizations in the
| current government, a lot of them independent agencies,
| that are politically aligned against the Trump
| administration. Many people in these organizations have
| backdoor or spying access to government communications,
| and so members of the Trump admin can't trust government
| systems for communication.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Yes. Thank you for making it succinctly.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I mean, the conversation included references to materials
| sent on 'the high side' (classified-material email
| systems). If they consider those systems secure, what's the
| point of using Signal instead?
| ctrlp wrote:
| I don't think it was a particularly good tactic, but if
| there was some motivation, it may have been more about
| political sabotage than foreign adversaries. I think that
| is the more interesting conversation, personally. What do
| you do if your political (domestic) antagonists control
| your comms? This question applies to all sides
| politically. Signal itself is promoted for "activist" use
| cases to protect comms from domestic antagonists. I'm
| presenting a similar dilemma. If one part of the
| government, (e.g., the military) controls secure comms,
| then another (e.g., the political) may have no choice but
| to opt-out. This problem is maybe better seen in the
| context of another country. It may be "too close" for us
| to see it clearly in the U.S. Other countries face this
| problem all the time, and Signal is used for the same
| reasons. I find it an interesting security problem.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| They are the government. You're suggesting trusting a third
| party over trusting themselves.
| ctrlp wrote:
| The government is not a unitary entity. The Constitution
| provides for three branches of government explicitly to
| offset each other's power. And the civil service is
| essentially a 4th branch of government. Just replacing
| the titular heads of government does not guarantee any
| ability to control the body. Witness the outpouring of
| protest at "the government's" attempts to control "the
| government" via DOGE. They are not the same.
| heyflyguy wrote:
| There are a ton of assumptions in here that have yet to be
| proven true.
| hatradiowigwam wrote:
| > Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the
| highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised.
| Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to
| fail opsec than backdoors.
|
| Once upon a time, I was visited very forcefully by the FBI at
| 0600. They used a battering ram to gain access to my domicile.
|
| During the "interview" that took place later that morning, they
| requested some information from me. I told them that the
| information was contained in Signal conversations between two
| recipients, and the messages in question have "disappearing
| messages" turned on. tldr; the messages are no longer
| available.
|
| Relevant parts of conversation that followed:
|
| me: "Do you have signal?"
|
| agent: "I have it on my phone if that's what you mean."
|
| me: "No, do you HAVE it - as in, do you have access to messages
| sent between other parties?"
|
| agent: "If we do, I am unaware of it, and we certainly don't
| 'have it' with regard to this matter."
|
| Take that for what it's worth.... my takeaway was that they(the
| FBI at least) have not compromised Signal. This was late in
| 2019 for context.
|
| The other takeaway...be careful who you trust. That all
| happened because I trusted someone I shouldn't have.
| viccis wrote:
| I think there is likely a difference between what the FBI
| does to someone they want info pretty badly from vs what
| <insert state actor> does to someone that they have
| determined is a keystone to one of their national
| adversaries.
|
| If they did have some kind of collection capability around
| Signal, they likely would not have risked burning it on you.
| hatradiowigwam wrote:
| > If they did have some kind of collection capability
| around Signal, they likely would not have risked burning it
| on you.
|
| I've always thought the exact same thing. The harm was
| ~800m USD to a private company. Sounds big, but it's
| nothing compared to actual state sponsored anything.
|
| Just to add some more (possibly useful) context from the
| encounter....
|
| The FBI was not able to unlock many LUKS secured devices -
| at all. They had zero success over approx 30 days, and had
| to explore alternative methods to obtain key material.
|
| The FBI was not able to decrypt blowfish2 (ie vim -x).
|
| The FBI was not able to decrypt ccrypt secured files (ie
| aes256).
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Wtf were you up to :rubschin:
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| "it's possible that the current admin working groups don't
| trust the official secure channels and assume they are
| compromised and they are being spied upon by their own or
| foreign agencies"
|
| Jesus Christ, this is dumb. Using a civilian app with civilian
| phones is literally the best way to get spied on, by either
| "your own" or foreign agencies. These people are going to get
| us all killed in a nuclear first strike.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| > These people are going to get us all killed in a nuclear
| first strike.
|
| Not sure how leaking state secrets is risking nuclear
| annihilation - unless they invite Putin or Xi mistakenly in
| their Signal Group and plan to bomb Moscow or Beijing but the
| coziness of the current administration with these 2 countries
| is certainly not making this scenario realistic at all.
|
| Instead the reality is likely more boring: they just
| accelerate American decline
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the
| highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised.
| Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to
| fail opsec than backdoors.
|
| If you new that Signal was secretly a front by the CIA/NSA then
| you'd feel pretty comfortable using it.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Secretly? Surely you're not suggesting people on Signal
| Foundation's board are intelligence assets? Surely, you're
| joking. That could never, ever, ever be the case. Why would
| you say such things.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| They can bake any Tom Clancy style excuse they want. They broke
| the law and they're incompetent. Even if you want to ignore
| one, they still need to go. Making mistakes like this anywhere
| else would cost you your job.
| Izkata wrote:
| I'd go with b: They've been talking for a while about finding
| information leaks, and the messages themselves seem a bit
| staged. They probably did it intentionally with different
| people, with slightly different wording, and because of which
| version got published they just identified a leak.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. They were the ones who added the
| journalist to the chat. The chat wasn't covertly relayed to a
| journalist by one of the members.
| rahkiin wrote:
| That would require coordinated competence. Testing for these
| kind of leaks is much easier with paper than live chats too
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A barium meal is for finding leakers within an organization.
| IF you send material to a journalist, unsolicited, and they
| report on it, what exactly have you established?
|
| Like, do you think they did the same thing with multiple
| journalists in an attempt to see who would publish and who
| would keep their mouths shut?
|
| Bear in mind, when you join a Signal group you don't see the
| conversation history from before you arrived, only the live
| updates that take place during the time you're a member.
| Also, anyone in the group can view the list of group members
| and receives notifications about people being added
| to/removed from/leaving the group.
| Izkata wrote:
| My guess would be the journalist wasn't the one being
| tested, it was one of the other members. Adding the
| journalist would be how it was leaked.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It may or may not be bad security (I lean toward a rather than
| b), but it definitely violates record-keeping requirements.
| Deliberations of public officials might need to be classified,
| but they should definitely be recorded. If you're using
| disappearing messages to auto-erase records of conversations,
| it's a kind of fraud upon the public.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| Using Signal is very very very intentional. They may have fat
| fingered an invite but that does not excuse the whole skirting-
| all-natsec-protocols.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| FWIW, Signal has been the de facto semi-informal chat app
| throughout the US intelligence community for many years. I
| first started using Signal several years ago because I needed
| it to chat with people in DC.
|
| European governments do the same but with WhatsApp.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| stop lying
| ctrlp wrote:
| I've had a similar experience.
| scythe wrote:
| >It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly,
| by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes.
|
| It was Mike Waltz who invited Jeff Goldberg to connect on
| Signal. It seems inordinately unlikely that he would have been
| uninvolved if it was an intentional leak.
| dogman144 wrote:
| For a tech forum, this take is pretty darn close to once again
| giving bad/dumb actors benefit of the doubt backed up by
| zero.zero% technical logic by claiming they're actually playing
| 4D OPSEC chess.
|
| They replace "ideologically compromised SCIFs" with...... 18
| separate iOS devices that I'm sure are on 18 separate OS/app
| versions and device postures and...
|
| Got news for you - want to compromise e2e encryption and
| Signal? You do it via what they did. So no, they are not
| correct.
| markhahn wrote:
| if you think the national security infrastructure is
| untrustworthy, you need to fix the national security
| infrastructure. getting elected doesn't mean you get to create
| your own private government - we call that a revolution, not an
| election.
|
| but of course, this lot thinks the existing government is all
| corrupt / deepstate.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Democratic elections are always potentially mini-revolutions.
| That's the risk of democracy.
| analog31 wrote:
| They _are_ being spied upon, by the future, on purpose. That 's
| why we have laws regarding records retention, open meetings,
| etc.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Lincoln famously suspended the law of habeas corpus (due
| process) for the purposes of preserving the Union and his
| ability to govern, and many consider him to be one of our
| greatest statesmen. There is no government on earth that can
| function "in the open". Secrecy is a requirement. Go ahead
| and try to plan an office party without some "need to know"
| organizers and see what kind of trouble and interference you
| stir up.
| ctrlp wrote:
| It would be interesting and valuable to have additional security
| controls in Signal group chats. It's frustrating that the
| platform is so feature limited.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Can you expand on what you'd like to see?
| ctrlp wrote:
| Some layer of ACL and better controls over group membership
| and message visibility. In this case, if it were an
| inadvertent added member, then there could be a group/role
| level restrictions on channels that restrict members from a
| pool of approved members depending on the security context.
| Classic security stuff, really. I'm sure others could think
| of more interesting use cases, but preventing mistaken group
| adds feels like low-hanging fruit.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I thought you meant. This situation is
| what MAC and specifically MLS are actually for, so that
| exactly this doesn't happen. There must be mobile devices
| and texting apps that actually support that but as far as I
| understand it Android is very far from being able to
| implement that kind of policy (despite heavy use of
| SELinux).
|
| It's actually weird we don't see this in the corporate
| world either. These problems, as many of us know
| personally, exist everywhere, not just at the White House
| and it's going to lead to huge issues down the road.
|
| Anyone here know if the DoD actually has their own stuff
| for this? It was they who came up with these technologies
| back in the rainbow books days.
| ctrlp wrote:
| A stupid simple way to do it would be to use control
| groups as security pools. If you are not a member some
| master control group, then you can't be added to related
| spawned "child" groups. Better than what is there now,
| which is nothing. Would have to be client level controls,
| maybe a smart contract could govern, but could Signal
| build on the current abstractions by having groups be
| members of groups and inherit the same "phonebook" as the
| group they are a member of. Just spitballing.
| Madhouse61 wrote:
| Jeffrey Goldberg mentioned in an interview with MSNBC his Signal
| Alias was "JG." I wonder if JD Vance goes by JD?
| Animats wrote:
| Here's how Eisenhower dealt with a similar leak.[1]
|
| General Henry Miller made public comments about the secret date
| of the Allied invasion of Normandy in May 1944. He was a personal
| friend of Eisenhower. Eisenhower demoted him and sent him back to
| the US in disgrace. He wasn't court-martialed.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/fD0IlFPTopA?t=269
| rafaelmn wrote:
| I'm sorry but how in the hell is that a similar leak other than
| they are in the same category ?
|
| Not justifying Trump administration but just seems like a whole
| different level of stakes.
| dontparticipate wrote:
| Today's bombing of Yemen is tomorrow's landing of Marines on
| Taiwan, or I guess these days marching into Montreal and
| landing in Greenland. All of these require complete OPSEC
| from the entire chain of command.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Indirect strong hint:
|
| Signal is uncompromised.
|
| ...at least at the moment.
|
| Or of course, that's what they want you to think :D
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| The reason?
|
| I would put my chips on (an attempt at) avoiding the duty to keep
| records.
| joshuamerrill wrote:
| I began my career in a classified environment working on
| government satellite programs.
|
| In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I
| shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over
| unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded--likely fired, or
| less likely, prosecuted.
|
| It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets
| from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.
|
| It is mind-boggling that _18 people_ were on this thread, and
| none of them ever suggested that this discussion would be better
| served in a SCIF. To say nothing of SecDef starting the thread on
| Signal in the first place.
|
| How many other such threads are active at the highest levels of
| government right now?
|
| Does Chinese intelligence know?
|
| I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the
| people involved. But the idea that this breach can occur with no
| accountability, consequences, or operational changes is
| unacceptable.
| bambax wrote:
| No accountability or consequences for anyone is the motto of
| the Trump administration (or indeed Trump himself, who is a
| convicted felon).
| SSLy wrote:
| The consequences will arrive by the will of the Trumpist
| administration.
|
| Levied on the Undesirables only.
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| Why are you specifically calling out you are not suggesting
| punishment nor prosecution?
| rschiavone wrote:
| Yeah that should be the bare minimum
| joshuamerrill wrote:
| Because I don't know whether either of those are appropriate.
|
| There aren't many comparable breaches to this one. The
| closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server
| being used for government business. In that case, the FBI
| investigated and declined to bring charges, under the
| expectation that a jury would be unlikely to render a guilty
| verdict.
|
| Okay, fine. But the FBI investigated and laid out the facts.
|
| My fear is that the current administration sees this as a PR
| problem. No, this was an operational failure. We should feel
| lucky that merely an American journalist was added by
| mistake.
|
| We should expect the FBI to investigate this, too. But I
| worry the facts are too inconvenient for even that level of
| accountability.
| bb88 wrote:
| Why would we expect Patel and Bongino to investigate
| anything here? They were put there to investigate anyone
| else other than the current administration.
|
| Why would any FBI agent take a risk on investigating anyone
| potentially in current or future administrations? They'll
| get fired later when the political winds change.
| tromp wrote:
| With the current administration I expect that fierce
| loyalty trumps both competence and accountability. Sadly,
| I expect to see many more such examples of amateur hour.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| This is not remotely comparable to the Clinton personal
| email issue. There was no classified information on
| Clinton's server. This is a significantly higher level of
| malfeasance. And the fact that everyone in the group seems
| perfectly fine with it means they're doing this regularly
| -- insecure comms are standard operating procedure for
| these people. They don't care if they leak to Putin, they
| care that there's no government record.
|
| If the Clinton email server thing was worth a rap on the
| knuckles, this one requires the immediate firing and
| possibly prosecution of every single person on that group
| text, each of whom should have known better.
| joshuamerrill wrote:
| The fact that nobody on the thread spoke up and said "we
| shouldn't be talking about this on Signal" worries me
| greatly.
|
| One possible explanation is that it happens all the time.
| bb88 wrote:
| I think that's the point.
|
| Signal prevents what should be official government
| communications from being recorded. If it's recorded it
| can be investigated.
| trhway wrote:
| It is significantly more severe than the diplomatic
| cables and the other leaks that Assange and Manning each
| did a decade for.
| donnachangstein wrote:
| > There was no classified information on Clinton's
| server.
|
| This is absolutely false, or as the kids call it,
| "misinformation".
|
| A 3 second Google search confirms:
|
| _100 emails contained information that should have been
| deemed classified at the time they were sent, including
| 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret". An
| additional 2,093 emails were retroactively designated
| confidential by the State Department._
|
| The whole issue with her emails is she purposely never
| labeled anything so as to have plausible deniability.
| watwut wrote:
| Nah, the whole outrage with her emails was performative
| outrage and hypocrisy. And no, they were not nearly
| comparable to what happened here nor to what DOGE does.
| Nor to what Trump did in the past.
|
| "But here emails" was just republicans doing what they
| always do and pretending to be angry over mild stuff
| while giving own people pass over big stuff.
| drdeca wrote:
| Not claiming that it is comparable, nor am I upset by it,
| but, one oughtn't claim that there was nothing
| confidential there if there was, in fact, confidential
| stuff in there. I don't care if this makes it easier for
| other people to make a narrative. If someone makes a
| false claim in these kinds of discussions, the false
| claim should be corrected.
| codewench wrote:
| 18 USC 793(f) seems to apply here:
|
| "Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession
| or control of any document, writing ... through gross
| negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper
| place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his
| trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss,
| theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior
| officer--
|
| Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
| ten years, or both."
|
| We can only guess about the "prompt reporting of the
| issue", but from what I've seen and heard I'm willing to
| put money on the fact that, no, this was not reported.
| bb88 wrote:
| Why would the FBI investigate anyone who would be
| pardoned by the president anyway?
| belter wrote:
| Don't worry, Courts are going away also...
|
| "Speaker Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts
| as GOP ramps up attacks on judges" -
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-
| johns...
| chasil wrote:
| Assuming this to be true, this conversation is over.
|
| "The Biden administration installed the Signal messaging
| app on CIA computers and approved it for official
| government use."
|
| https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/25/has-the-
| staffer...
| bb88 wrote:
| It looks like it was approved only for CIA use with
| permissible use. Even though it was installed, did not
| mean it was suitable for all communications.
|
| Here's the important relevant quote:
| "It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate
| for work purposes. Provided that any decisions that are
| made are also recorded through formal channels. So
| those were procedures that were implemented. My staff
| implemented those processes," Ratcliffe said.
| "My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message
| group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not
| include classified information," he added.
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-director-john-ratcliffe-
| defen...
| mulmen wrote:
| [delayed]
| ohgr wrote:
| At least here in the UK our politicians delete all their
| messages on WhatsApp https://www.politico.eu/article/the-
| british-governments-disa...
|
| More seriously, having worked in an undisclosed defence
| company, we were told that we _would_ be prosecuted if we did
| this. There were many many security controls in place that
| prevented this from happening on top of the threat.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Are you able to share any of those security controls? How do
| you stop presumably well-intended Signal app users from
| conferencing? Are you talking about cellular signal blocking,
| or are you talking about avoiding public networks entirely in
| favor of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities
| (SCIFs)?
| ohgr wrote:
| Many layers of physical controls and regular audits mostly.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > But the idea that this breach can occur with no
| accountability, consequences, or operational changes is
| unacceptable.
|
| There will be no accountability, consequences, or operational
| changes because the American people (a plurality of them
| anyway) voted for this. I like how people are even bothering to
| bring up the risk of prosecution, as if Trump wouldn't just
| pardon the people involved anyway.
|
| Look, I am as disgusted as you are, but I continue to be
| impressed/disgusted by the neverending levels of shamelessness
| shown by Trump and his cronies:
|
| 1. Trump is now somehow blaming the reporter for this, calling
| him a "sleazebag".
|
| 2. Probably doesn't need repeating, but all the chants about
| "lock her up" against Hillary Clinton were due to her supposed
| mishandling of classified information. Yeah, waiting to hear
| all the outrage from the right over this 10x more egregious
| example.
|
| 3. I still continue to be awed by Hegseth railing against DEI
| because it's "anti-merit", as I can't think of an ass clown
| less qualified to be Sec of Defense.
|
| Nothing will change unless the American people, at large,
| decide to punish those at the ballot box who exhibit these
| behaviors, and so far they have not been willing to do that.
| bambax wrote:
| > _The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real.
| Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly
| impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal
| group_
|
| Why? Why not stay in the group indefinitely (or until found) and
| write stories sourced from a mysterious individual deep in the
| entrails of the Trump administration? That would have been
| absolutely specacular and could have resulted in a hilarious
| purge while the culprits searched in vain for a traitor in their
| ranks.
| rdsubhas wrote:
| Are you suggesting he knowlingly convert into a hacker and get
| prosecuted as a traitor?
|
| He exited and correctly disclosed himself as a victim of being
| unknowingly added. This is exactly what anyone who values the
| rest of their life should do.
| yowzadave wrote:
| What are the odds that Goldberg was included in the Signal chat
| intentionally by a whistleblower? I.e., someone who had
| reservations about what was about to take place (either the
| bombing action itself, or the intentional avoidance of government
| recordkeeping) and so included him as a witness?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I'd give it about 10%
| simmerup wrote:
| Sounds like youre desperately searching for competence where
| none exists
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I guess Signal is pretty safe, but the phone you are using it on
| is far from safe. Then there is the issue of being able to
| accidently add unvetted people to the chat. Is that pretty much
| the size of the technological issue here?
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| It just came out one of the chat members was in Russia at the
| time.
| simonh wrote:
| Steve Witkoff was on the chat while he was in Russia.
|
| There's a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked
| devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by
| just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian
| hackers.
|
| What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a
| QR code while he was in Moscow?
| bb88 wrote:
| Why must a Signal attack take place only in Russia? If Russia
| intelligence operations can operate freely in the US, they can
| attack US Officials in the US as well.
| simonh wrote:
| Good point. I was just thinking Witkoff must be dealing with
| Russian functionaries all the time in Moscow so they have
| near constant direct access. There's nothing to stop them
| duping one of them in the US though, and it doesn't seem like
| duping these guys would be a stretch.
| bb88 wrote:
| Honestly, the Russians probably already _have_ done so. It
| 's just a matter of who's phone in that group has been
| compromised.
|
| In a previous world, some three letter agency (FBI maybe?)
| would seize the phones in the chat to investigate the leak.
| belter wrote:
| What are the chances Trump portrait[1] has a passive
| microphone? [2]
|
| [1] "Putin gave Trump portrait to envoy, Kremlin confirms" -
| https://thehill.com/policy/international/5212691-putin-trump...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
| uberdru wrote:
| Totally! Probably for a restaurant menu or something. . . It
| also seems likely that they added Jeffrey Goldberg, (the
| Atlantic's editor-in-chief) to the chat as the outlet, so the
| whole thing would become public. . . .
| bb88 wrote:
| How about a restaurant that doesn't have menus and requires
| patrons to scan a QR code?
|
| Acrylic table menus have inserts which can be easily
| replaced.
| stavros wrote:
| You guys are forgetting that you have to scan the QR code
| from Signal's "link new device" menu, and then approve the
| new device, which is a somewhat uncommon thing for a
| restaurant menu to ask you to do.
| gigatexal wrote:
| The level of incompetence in this administration is laughable --
| well it would be if it wasn't so sad
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